freebies

every day I get at least one or two requests (sometimes as high as 8 or 9) to use my knowledge and resources for free.

I was recently showing a potential client I could competently solve their dynamics problem, a lot of time was put in. They kept coming back asking for a few added pipes and valves. What about this , what about that. and then finally the crunch came. Why couldnt i just send the results too.

I never got any work from them. No doubt theyve moved onto the next sucker or think they can cobble it together themselves. I got an email from the 2nd largest oil company in the US
to do an extensive structural design for them for free, because they "had no money". I was in their shutdown and saw the thousands of tradespeople walking around doing SFA. This after they had failed to pay the last bill because of theyre own accounting screw up with lost PO'S. It is truly incredable whats going on. Clearly they had done this before and likely got what they wanted. That just hurts everybody and I am disgusted with the people who expect and permit it to happen.

   Our Dept defense recently demanded refunds of the $cdn50/day cost +meal+ living allowance they had granted to military staff to be far away on explosives and other training courses. (note this was all they getting other than their pay). In the same breath the same dept lost $150Million in a kickback and defraud scheme with Hewlett Packard and internal highup officials.
There a Chemcal Company here that has a bad rep for taking 9 or ten proposals and then cobbling together theyre own construction out of the best of the really weld done drawings and details they were getting from people trying to get the work.

Asking for free (or unrealistically cheap) engineering, expecting free engineering and doing free engineering is all part of the problem.

it comes to be constantly expected, and this is a widespread problem. My lawyer, dentist, doctor wont let me fill out a simple form, let alone give me the form because that is his livelihood. Or anything else I need for that matter. ( i have no problem with barter , it keeps the money grubbers out of your pocket). Trouble is, the only thing I can trade is i can help size beams for house renos, or help fix their car, but they always want that for free as well.

As soon as you do stuff for free , without exchange of some value, you are shooting yourself
and every one of your colleagues in the foot. Think about it, if you get it for free, it gets little or no value put on it. These people dont want to buy the knowledge and tools for themselves because they know it costs money.

Before long your time is expected for little or nothing. The mentatilty becomes if you got that done for nothing, why does this cost so much. YOU must be incompetent Or inadequte or something. Wake up guys.

al

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Received on Sat Mar 13 12:52:00 2004