Is McDonalds still hiring?

The profanity was out of line and undercut beer man's credibility, unfortunately. The idiot publisher did deserve a lecture about how ridiculous and insulting his pay would be to any self-respecting journalist, but Heineken shifted some sympathy to the jerk by cussing at him. Better to have laughed at the guy and wished him well, trying to hire for pennies per word.

 

$50 a plate?
3.5 cents per word?
You must be out your mind!

 

wi, that's good work out of you.

 

well said ...

 

you gotta be fucking kidding. who gives two shits what beerman wrote in an e-mail to a guy he'll never work for? tris is an asswipe who takes advantage of people. i'm glad beerman busted his balls a bit.

 

Wow. Take a stand? I'm sorry you were forced into this profession. I'm sorry your $20k education didn't teach you that there's not a lot of money in this profession. Congratulations, you're like every other person in the world who thinks they're underappreciated and and underpaid. That's your problem, not his. You don't like it, you don't take the job. Simple as that.

 

This coming from the same dude who said he was mistreated on this board and just wrote "see ya!" on a thread, kind of like stomping his feet on the way out.

Given how you treated this dude, Heineken, can't say I'm surprised in your behavior.

 

and i thank YOU for that.

 

Actually, other than using the word, "fucking," which was quite unprofessional, I didn't think Heinie's e-mail to the editor was so bad. Honestly, I think working for free would be better, because then the freelancer knows he/she is doing it merely for the experience and/or to get something to put on a resume.

I don't know who, or what, the editor expects by paying 3.5 cents a word. (I've never heard of a pay rate that low, other than for free.) Clearly, there isn't enough money in his budget to do this properly -- or even with any semblance of credibility. I'm assuming Heinie knew that he wasn't going to get rich off this in the first place. But 3.5 cents? WTF.

It seems to me as if the guy should have had a better idea of what is bottom-line acceptable to get the kind of pieces he wants. Maybe $50 for a 500-word feature would be pretty skimpy, but that's still three times what the guy was offering. I don't think it's so wrong for a writer to say (albeit more politely): "Who do you think you'll get for 3.5 cents a word?"

 

The presumption that one stringer thinks he's speaking for the entire freelance world ... that's rich.

 

I understand the frustration, but he's raging against the wrong machine. From what it sounds like, this is a very small start-up in which the founder in probably leveraging himself out of every orifice he's got. It's not firing a warning shot across the bow of Bob Jelenic's yacht or Dean Singleton's pimped-out Hummer.

One of three things will happen, most likely: A. He'll get crap for stories and up his rate. B. He'll get crap for stories, but he'll accept it begrudgingly because he can't pay more. C. He'll get crap for stories, and that's fine because editorial isn't that important1. I suspect option B is the most likely, at least in the short term. But being told "are you fucking kidding me?" smacks of self-righteous indignation and might be therapeutic2 for the original poster, but won't do anyone any good. He's not going to see the light and pay a dollar a word or anything like that.

1 -- There's an outside chance he'll actually score a good writer, but it'll be dumb luck if he does.
2 -- My spelling is so fail it's actually fale

 

Again, this poster has proven himself to be a lout. I have no sympathy, especially after cursing out some small-time dude.

The way you treat the little people usually says a lot about your character, and that was shown big-time with this guy's response.

This coming from a guy who said a column about chicken-fed-by-mammy Bobby Reid was "character assassination" and "unethical."