"Professional" "polite" bullshit
From the second we started selling our time instead of our expertise, the rotten heart of working together started pumping. You hand me an expertly crafted shoe, charge something equal to the amount of time, effort, and respect and knowledge you have for your craft and self then when I buy it, we both get to walk away with something mutually understood as valuable.
When I have to buy "hours," especially when I may be completely unfamiliar with what you're working on, it makes things incredibly difficult. There's no amount of conversation that's going to give me an intimate understanding of the work you're doing. I've seen dozens of episodes of "How It's Made" and leave just as dumb as when I entered.
I'm attempting to hire-out people to help me get my addiction counseling business running. Words like "marketing" and "promotion" and "content creation" are infinitely vague. "Lead generation" can mean people who have money that have used it as you want them to use it again, or it can mean a spreadsheet of mostly fax numbers and defunct organizations and information. I'm using Upwork to approach my task. One of the first people I hired, with the lowest hourly rate of the bunch, began racking up higher bills than anyone else.
When I hit pause so we could discuss more explicitly what she was working on, I received a "professionally defensive" diatribe that signaled to me it was time to part ways. From my perspective, she's made almost $400 to, incorrectly, toy with my website, change a few colors, not get me verified on Google My Business, and was starting to compile a list of "resources" in the area I'm attempting to expand beyond. Throughout our time together, she would claim to have accomplished something, but it didn't, and still hasn't, necessarily translated. Me asking to get granular or more detailed was not received well. My explicitly stating I don't wish to be paying for "googling it-"level work there is no great way to phrase differently when that's explicitly what you told me you were doing.
What makes the situation worth writing about is that when we had our initial Zoom call, it was a great conversation. I liked her vibe and understanding. I appreciated the template she provided to follow week to week. Her feedback from previous clients is at 100%. That suggests she's got a solid head on her shoulders and I could more-or-less give her the reigns to work as she sees fit.
Now, as I went through more of her feedback, it was from people with very small budgets for very different kinds of work, or unlimited budgets with probably the same lack of knowledge as me, but hopped on her ride and smiled politely for the duration. I have good reason to pause and ask questions. Especially when she appears to have moved on to a new task before completing the last on her little template. If I ask you to define the "funnel" you want us to create, "a funnel takes some time" is not a definition. It's an invitation to spend more money on something I don't understand and you're not defining.
In contrast, I have a high-dollar person who provided 500 previous donors to causes like mine. I have grant writers who've submitted grants, or compiled ones to apply for if/when we get the non-profit status. I've had copy-editors give me explicit notes to change certain wording or add things for SEO or that check-writers like to see. It's a night and day difference, so I don't feel unfair or unkind in levying critical feedback about where my debt is going.
The seething civility subtext I find exhausting. We don't fundamentally trust each other, and when we act like we do, we build in this drama and catastrophized feeling of betrayal if we get less than we'd hoped. I didn't say "Bitch, you're wasting my money!" Not even close. I said I don't need someone redundantly doing something and I don't have a deep understanding and appreciation for what's been done so far, or needs to happen next. If your instinct on that is to respond with anything less than, "Oh, well here's another way I can try to explain it, and would you like to confirm a new budget to (x)?" I don't feel I can trust you or you're hearing my concerns in good faith.
The polite professional bullshit obscures the route to self-respect and shared dignity in approaching work. I think the problems I can experience one-on-one only scale and become the reason large companies adopt the policies they do. Don't you want a mythology about family or caring about one another to prevent your people from scrutinizing their circumstances? Don't you want to pay "minimally" so that you're not bleeding funds in service to people who, on any given day, you might not have a remote clue what they're actually doing. On top of that, you know first hand your own behavior or the hundreds of people you've worked with, and nearly everyone is happy to get paid to do functionally nothing.
I'm genuinely confident in the work I do, particularly when it's for someone else or I've got something larger in mind that I'm trying to service. I'm not going to get defensive if you start questioning what I'm up to. I'm not going to get angry if you ask me for details. I'm not going to even flirt with popping off if you've already paid me!
I learn with every interaction what constitutes "professional" or "worth it" or why things, big or small, do or don't happen. I have severely underestimated my professionalism or capacity. Honestly, as I reflect, I've probably fucked myself and taken too many notes on what passes for professionalism and allowed myself to accept worse than I should have. This, of course, immediately runs up against, do I want it done well, or want it done at all? I've tried to stay cognizant of not desperately reacting from feeling trapped to move on "something" or in "any" direction for the sake of it.
It's the seedy insecure underbelly that triggers something in me. I don't want to adopt the same defensive place of the message I received. I want to believe in and acknowledge fellow professionals to hear and see the same things and work to find a shared space. Increasingly, I feel like this is a character thing that can only be born out over time. I think it's why companies that cultivate and pass on legacies from within tend to do better than appealing to, in theory, the "options" of the market. "It's so hard to find good help these days," is an aphorism for a reason. It's not just because people aren't paid enough, I can tell you that much.
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