Worst Paid Tech job you have done??

[urbantechie]

Well here goes...

My friend's grandma (close friend too) is in the embroidory(sp?) business and wanted to use a newer version of the software for her $11,000 sewing machine (yes!! $11,000 for a damn sewing machine!!). So she called me up and said hey I want to use this new software can you come over and install it? I said sure and she told me she would pay me but why? Just run setup, answer a couple questions and i'm done right?

Well, I get there and she says she hasn't bought it yet |) and she pulls out a list and "Oh Yea" I need a better computer to run it too. She has a measly P166 so, she gives me a budget and I calculate and end up building her a whole new damn computer in one day. That was the easy part.

Now, she desgins shirts and all this stuff on the computer so the computer "talks" to the sewing machine via a modem look alike card. It was a ISA bus and no PnP. So I thought I will just stick the sucker in and it would work. WRONG!!! I put it in and the program kept giving me errors it couldn't communicate with the sewing machine. WTF!!! I stayed there till abouit 12:00AM trying to make the damn thing work.

So I get home and goto the website of the sewing machines website. I print out this 30pg manual on it. And on one page it tells me exactly how to set it up! Oh was I one happy little boy!! Cause the familie's main source of income was from this, so if I didn't get it working, I would of been so screwed. Anyways, I had to set in CMOS which IRQ was for ISA cards only and give it resources in Windows and all this other crap. Then I came back and set it up in 5min. I was so happy and full of relief. And guess waht she paid me?

A measly $40!!!! I didn't say anything, just a faint, "Thanks....". God was I pissed....

 

[tweekah]

You win some you lose some. The job I had was dell contract work. They now are paying flex pay (per job you do).

Why IS IT SUCK?
-Don't get redeemed 28cents per mile and don't get paid for the time driving
-Makes you work faster
-$30 per job you do within a 30mile radius.
-If one system is giving you a days worth of problems then you make $30 the whole day minus milage (I've averaged 5 jobs day...yet I know others who are about 4 shy =P)
-Dell Tech Support line puts you on hold (1 hour on the phone to order a request some screws/parts).

my daily rant....

 

[T2T III]

My worst?

About 4 years ago, I took on a 'little' assignment for a person who had a business that handled apartment shopping reports. He wanted to automate the process, but keep it spreadsheet based. I provided him an estimate for the whole job - $50 because I assumed that it would take part of an afternoon.

Well, that afternoon quickly came and gone and the spreadsheet needed more work. I was incorporating a lot of macros along with a few control panels to perform most of the functions into Lotus 123. Realizing that more work was involved, I was told that I would get more money based on the additional work.

The whole process took me about a month of my free time along with four trips to his office (50 mile round trip) to cover the progress of the program along with the purchase of a $40 Lotus manual so I could create more complex macros. In the end, he took me out to lunch (about $10 @ a Chinese restaurant) and gave me $200 for the whole project. During lunch, he kept trying to convice me that he wanted me to do the same work for about 4 other projects that he was trying to run - I kept declining the work.

A few weeks later, he called me seeking some technical support - which I walked him through and then the conversation turned to the 'hidden' worksheets that I created where the code resided. At that point, I instructed him not to f$ck up what I had done and indicated that I would provide no support for the application if he messed anything up. Basically, he wanted to sponge some more of my knowledge for free so he could work through the other applications on his own. Needless to say, that was the last phone call that I got from him.

 

[Rendus]

<< You win some you lose some. The job I had was dell contract work. They now are paying flex pay (per job you do).

Why IS IT SUCK?
-Don't get redeemed 28cents per mile and don't get paid for the time driving
-Makes you work faster
-$30 per job you do within a 30mile radius.
-If one system is giving you a days worth of problems then you make $30 the whole day minus milage (I've averaged 5 jobs day...yet I know others who are about 4 shy =P)
-Dell Tech Support line puts you on hold (1 hour on the phone to order a request some screws/parts).

my daily rant.... >>



HAH! BSC?

Worst job I've had?

L2 for Dell (I'm at work right now )

 

[Rendus]

Ack! My first double post.

 

[tweekah]

haha Yup BSC....
You hit the nail on the head...