Okay, this is the story. I've been doing a website for someone, total revamp. Most of the time I'm working alongside a friend of his, which I don't mind. She's a great person, we get along fine, no deal-breaker issues - until now.
The website doesn't lay out right in Firefox, so I've been trying to figure out how to fix it so that it shows up fine in IE and firefox. She's asked me to fix it, and I'll grant that I should have gotten back to her a little sooner. That was my slip up, I admit it. But because she didn't hear back from me, she had a guy she knows who's a webdesigner go in and alter my layout. And this wasn't just one change, but several changes. It's ruined the layout, and he's changed text colour in at least one place I've noticed. She not only has my email but also my phone number. While I get that she's busy helping to organize his show for next Saturday, in the time it took her to contact Dave she could have called me. And there was no email saying 'Michelle, I need an answer' or from either her or Dave saying 'hey I made some changes'. I found out about this completely by accident.
I don't want to burn any bridges here, because other than this I've enjoyed working with her so far and everything else we've managed to talk through just fine. But I don't appreciate someone a.)tinkering with my layout, and b.)leaving me to find out about it on my own. I'm not getting paid for this work, but this is my time and effort. Time and effort I could have spent looking for paid work. Now I went into this project willingly as a volunteer thing, I had no problem with that. And it's paid off, as I've made some new connections that could quite possibly lead to paid work in the future which is great. As well, I have someone who's got far more experienced now that I can turn to if I need help. So there's been a good payoff. I don't regret taking this project on, but this still burns my butt.
So what do I do? What do I say without sounding like a total b*tch?
The website doesn't lay out right in Firefox, so I've been trying to figure out how to fix it so that it shows up fine in IE and firefox. She's asked me to fix it, and I'll grant that I should have gotten back to her a little sooner. That was my slip up, I admit it. But because she didn't hear back from me, she had a guy she knows who's a webdesigner go in and alter my layout. And this wasn't just one change, but several changes. It's ruined the layout, and he's changed text colour in at least one place I've noticed. She not only has my email but also my phone number. While I get that she's busy helping to organize his show for next Saturday, in the time it took her to contact Dave she could have called me. And there was no email saying 'Michelle, I need an answer' or from either her or Dave saying 'hey I made some changes'. I found out about this completely by accident.
I don't want to burn any bridges here, because other than this I've enjoyed working with her so far and everything else we've managed to talk through just fine. But I don't appreciate someone a.)tinkering with my layout, and b.)leaving me to find out about it on my own. I'm not getting paid for this work, but this is my time and effort. Time and effort I could have spent looking for paid work. Now I went into this project willingly as a volunteer thing, I had no problem with that. And it's paid off, as I've made some new connections that could quite possibly lead to paid work in the future which is great. As well, I have someone who's got far more experienced now that I can turn to if I need help. So there's been a good payoff. I don't regret taking this project on, but this still burns my butt.
So what do I do? What do I say without sounding like a total b*tch?
