So this actually makes me pretty glad we're back here. I'm a little tipsy, so please forgive if my spelling/grammar is off.
These days, my gainful employment is... basically QA for audiobooks. I proof the audio to ensure that it matches the manuscript it's recorded from. It's a pretty good gig, because my anxiety has kinda been out of control since... a while now, and this doesn't require leaving the house. Hell, this doesn't require PANTS if I don't want it to. It's great.
Except...
One of the primary narrators I work for is my father in law. I charge him less because he's family. Initially, I did the same for my cousin's husband. The difference is that my cousin's husband started insisting on paying me more because of the quality of my work. My father in law hasn't. So while my base rate is up to $25 per finished hour, he's still paying me $10. To be fair, I started at $15 and have bumped it up over time, but over the holidays I keep getting "I wish I could afford to pay you more," which is really frustrating, because I DO TOO. At this point, all work I do for him is at a substantial loss because not only is it less than half my going rate, but he's the most error-prone narrator I do work for on the regular.
The more astute, or potentially experienced, will spot that my rate is per FINISHED hour, i.e. per hour of narration. My better narrators deviate so little from the total run time that it's negligible. Even a 12 hour book doesn't rack up enough time lost on notation to really be a quantifiable dent in my hourly rate. My father in law, on the other hand, often winds up taking half-again the runtime when the time I spend on notation is figured in, bringing me basically down to minimum wage for his stuff.
Now I'm entrenched. I can't really STOP doing work for him, or DEMAND he pay more, without causing some really uncomfortable drama. But the bigger problem is that right now, I'm the primary breadwinner, so this drag on my income is making an already challenging financial situation (freelancing ISN'T exactly full time unless you are either super lucky or way better at aggressive self promotion than I am) worse.
I'm not really looking for a solution--though if anyone has suggestions for an amenable resolution, I'll welcome ideas--I just needed to vent somewhere that it wouldn't wind up finding its way back to him. And, as frustrating as THAT is, at least he pays me in a timely manner, unlike the full-service audio processor who's been subcontracting me the QA portion of her work and has an outstanding invoice that has been so since NOVEMBER. If I weren't so hard up for work, I'd be refusing to work with her in the future because this isn't even just a one time thing--it's her MO. Even though SHE expects to be paid within the month, she regularly makes ME wait 2+.
ETA: Also, I started this post last night while drinking, forgot that that was the case, and then posted it without combing over it because I'm still pre-coffee. I am not day drinking.
