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I've declined work in two instances, and while the situations were much
different from the one you described, it still took some backbone to say
'no.'
I'll be brief. In one situation, I'd been writing a weekly newsletter for
a department in a fairly large company. We started out with quite
reasonable turn-around times, but after a few weeks, they began to demand
copy in 24 hours. I refused, saying that my professionl work would be
compromised by doing a rush job every week. They've since taken the
newsletter in-house, and some poor non-writer has to pull it together.
In the second instance, my contact at a company called out of desparation
to ask if I could make some marketing phone calls for them! Uh, nope,
telemarketing is not one of my areas of speciality.
These are the only times that I've declined work, but I will do it again
if the situation warrants it.
Kathryn J Acciari
Technical Writer/Communicator
Buffalo, New York
acciari -at- acsu -dot- buffalo -dot- edu
On Thu, 30 Jul 1998, Maurice King wrote:
>
> I think this discussion merits some online exchanges. I think I'm not alone in saying that if I promote myself as an expert in online documentation for software, it's hardly right to have me writing hardware service manuals about products of which I have zero background while the same company is advertising widely for persons with proven online documentation skills, and that's exactly what I'm experiencing! If this is a tactic to "show the newbie who's boss," I've passed the stage in life in which I'm prepared for initiation rites of this nature; I certainly don't like it when it relates to my livelihood.
>
> - Maury K.
>
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