Hammer-philia

Dear Hammer,

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but we are not prepared to make a full payment at this time.

There was still a lot of copy editing to be done, and the factchecking was incomplete. There were errors and inconsistencies in spelling (designer names, store names), as well as in addresses (cross streets, subway stops); and there was at least one instance in which a name was completely wrong (Charles vs. Christopher). These were found at various stages of the proofing process, extensive changes had to be made to the maps, which were created based on the addresses you checked. We had to spend a lot of time fixing what we could and hiring other people to recheck the information. Our production schedule, as well as the final product, suffered several blows.

In light of this, we are prepared to pay you a kill fee of one-third of the total invoice. Your invoice was for $806.25, so we are prepared to issue you a total payment of $268.75. It is our policy to pay invoices within about 90 days of the invoice date.

Please feel free to contact me with questions or concerns. I'm sorry that this didn't work out. Good luck in the future.

Sincerely,
EditorBitch




EditorBitch,

I was shocked to read your message. I wondered if you had read the wrong version of that longer document.

I am sorry to have disappointed you so much. Nonetheless, I am appalled at the way that you would so drastically respond to the issue. I put in hard hours and worked very quickly to stay within your budget, and the document you gave me was in very poor condition.

I realize that you must be quite upset about this, because you seem like a very sweet and honest person. But did I make enough errors to dock two-thirds (66%) of my pay? Are you discarding 66% of my work? This seems quite severe and extreme, considering how much hard time and hard work I put in towards your project.

I am asking you to do the honorable thing. Pay me for the work that I have done, my work that you are benefitting from. I don't know how much time you spent looking at Catherine's initial document, but it required a great deal of combing through over and over again--- work that could not possible have been perfected in the short time I spent with the document.
Again, I realize that you are disappointed and that you feel let down. But please reconsider the gravity of the penalty. I did a great deal of work for you in a compressed amount of time: I worked on the Favorites, I fixed each and every subway, I worked on alphabetizing the lists..... I did far more than what you hired me to do in a very short amount of time.

Please be fair, EditorBitch.

Hammer