I feel like I’m losing my goddam mind. I’m a mostly freelancer with a part time employer. My employer only pays me once a month, but they overpaid last month and the solution (as they told us ON payday) was to just not pay us this month.
Ok fine, I’m salty they didn’t tell me sooner, I would have invested less of that money in new tools if I knew it had to last 2 months but I guess I should have tracked my payments better, and I have other income so whatever.
Well a major freelance client sent me a large payment on an UNENDORSED paper check and have been dodging my emails since. It’s not good to be “troublesome” in my business, especially to repeat customers, but it’s getting to the point where I might have to take these folks to court.
A smaller client insists they paid me, but after a long back-and-forth we’ve established they somehow processed an incorrect email address and potentially sent my money to -someone- and ‘need to figure that out’ before they correctly pay me.
A third client fully expects me to start working before negotiating pay at all.
I’ve been in business for 10 years, and it’s never been like this, what is happening? The icing on the cake is that not one of them is apologetic, and they’re all manipulating me into feeling like discussing my botched pay is inconveniencing them.
Is this just acceptable now?? I’m out of money, not because I’m not working, but because ALL off the people I’m working for have screwed up paying me. Like I’m getting to the point where I’m not going to be able to buy groceries! FFS I’m losing it. The psychological stress is surreal, I can’t enjoy or focus on anything.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Just had to get that off my chest.