We spent the last several days out of town, and I received two SMS messgaes from a firm that hires me for contract jobs. Since I was nowhere near a Wifi hotspot, though, I couldn't answer them. I let them go, figuring they would be re-routed before I could look at them anyway.

So I was surprised this morning to see that neither of the two jobs had been re-routed. I checked them out and took the first. I went onto the second to note that the fee for the job, which was initially $100, had been raised, twice. It now stood at $150. In this case, it actually paid off that I couldn't answer the call right away.

I scheduled and lined up both jobs, then received a call asking if I could be onsite at 8AM tomorrow. No problem, I would just have to make arrangements with my profs and get my work in. The call came in about noon.

At 3 o'clock, the client called back. The end user had cancelled, he told me. Still not a problem. See, the contract terms with this agency stipulate that if a contract is cancelled by the buyer less than 24 hours prior to the scheduled call, the buyer pays $30. Since this is close to my standard hourly rate of $35, it means I'd get paid for almost an hour for nothing.

At 4 o'clock, he asked if I could make the service call today. Had the initial call (about noon) asked me, I could have scheduled it today, but with less than an hour before I had to be at my regular job, it wasn't doable. The buyer asked me to close out the ticket, figuring he would get another tech on call (there is ONE other tech registered with this agency in the area code, and I doubt he's taking too many calls on that short order). He called my the company that I contract though, who probably informed him about the 24 hour policy, because he called back about 15 minutes later asking if I could fit them in later in the day.

So, all in all, I have three contract jobs this week, which is a pretty good week. It means I'll be putting about 150 miles driving in for them, but it still should be a good week all around.