Stuff that Wastes Time

Being independent implies that I don't have to answer to anyone.

But that's not the reality.

I answer to my customers every day. And my biggest customer is the one that supplies me with the bulk of my work. So in that sense, I regularly answer to them.

Lately they've been getting irritating, asking for extra time-consuming things that they of course don't pay for. Stupid little administrative rules designed to shift paperwork from their staff down to me. Playing games with what they will and won't accept in terms of billing, expenses, and so forth. It all costs me, in time or money or both.

The essential problem of a small business is that you must constantly make your biggest customer happy. Knowing that, the big customer raises the bar and lowers the pay. And the small business person, despite seeing all his (my) other costs continue to grow year after year, just has to accept the fact that the trend will continue until it becomes so one-sided that there's no longer any point to continuing the business relationship.

The only avenue open to me is to do my best to be more sought-after than any of the customer's other contractors, which hopefully grants some small bit of leverage to push back against the next list of silly rules and requirements. The ability to just be able to say, "Sure, we would be happy to comply with your new requests. To cover our cost of providing these additional services, our rate will be increased to $X."

I know. Dreaming again.