Friends and Contractual Business

I have been having a difficult time, again, the past few days. I most likely will blog about it in my 'down, write blog' blog. . . .but today's post is my current dilemma impacting my payperpost status!

I'm bummed and leaning on upset that I have missed so many paid opportunities this past week. I started babysitting for my neighbor friends down the street. One of the first things I asked the mom was to be sure I could get permission to use her computer while I'm there babysitting, to keep checking on paid jobs. Unfortunately, the interruptions and time away from the pc are impacting me more financially than I anticipated.

I wasn't comfortable leaving her computer on my payperpost account all day and for me to simply toggle the mouse to check for updates, because I have seen first hand how the bad guys can sneak through onto the pc at any time. I don't believe she knows much about firewalls and protection, I have asked her and she seems pretty lax about that. So I have been shutting down her slow ass computer every time. It is such an old dinosaur piece of duty, that it is frustrating just firing it back up.

Anyway, I'm not going to get into that much detail with her. I don't want to hurt her feelings, but today we are scheduled to have "a talk" anyway, about other things too and I need to let them know that the babysitting gig is impacting my monthly income already.

She drafted up a contract and I received it the night before being scheduled to start, so we agreed I'd look it over, mark up my input and we could go over it. Well, I babysat that first week with major concerns on my mind. I am upset at the way she drafted up the contract, but I think it reflects mainly the inexperience at business rather than malicious intent. Still, it was kina harsh.

Here I thought we were having a friendly agreement. I am in a position to help because I am home and have time. They have helped me over this past year with on a number of occasions. One of them was a biggie when the husband put in a new battery in my car in the middle of a rainy night because I needed my car that night and immediately the next morning. The wife has helped me with rides during car trouble and trips to the store. They got my daughter and I free passes to the county fair, admission and all rides free - that was big.
But I still can't help but feel a little taken advantage of.

I agreed, tentatively, to take on the babysitting at a less than premium rate to help them out. But on top of that, they are having me clean their house while I am there. At first it seemed fine, before reality set in anyway. I figured I wouldn't mind doing some housework because that would keep me from just sitting around and the little ones could help me clean too. It could be a learning lesson. They are paying for the cleaning, but that only brings it up to an actual babysitting rate. So, essentially, I am getting paid the same as babysitting and I get to clean the dirty toilet, mop floors, vacuum, dust and maintain wood stove(winter) all for a babysitting rate. Hmmm, reality is sitting in my gut....

But, I can't fault them for that, I agreed to it. What they don't know is that I will be raising the rate in 6 months, but I'll give them 30days written notice.

On my first day babysitting, I took a few minutes to sit and read the contract. What I thought was going to be a friendly, fare agreement quickly turned my stomach. Sentences like, "Other than throwing up, I expect you to come to work. And there are places with exclamation points scattered throughout. I felt like I was being talked down to.

Well, crap. Now I have to get ready to go over there. I just finished marking up the contract and I am dreading this conversation. I am shaking already. It feels like it's going to be more of a confrontation. I hate this feeling.
Oh, by the way, that is not me or my neighbor holing 'our' contract. I googled paper contract scroll expecting to find a nice pretty scroll of paper.....