This one is a bit of a downer and mostly me venting about a nightmare job of mine I should have walked away from a long time ago. Let this be a precautionary tale to those of you starting freelance.A group of dentists are making a directory for their 500+ member organization. The job comes to my print-shop-day-job, but we can't do the file creation part of it (they have ancient computers and no InDesign) so my boss sends them my way and suggests I freelance it to keep the job close as well as "help me out" with extra income. I'm saving for my own house so I do need the money so I talk to the clients.
The client said they will provide an excel sheet with data about the members. I need to use that 500+ directory of data to make a book divided into three sections.
- Directory organized alphabetically by members' LAST NAMES
- Directory of members organized by the COUNTY their practice is in
- Directory of members organized by their SPECIALIZATION in the field
I give them my hourly rate and let them know what I need to complete the job. They assure me they've done this before and that it'll be sent over very soon.
I have better computers than my day job, and I’ve done data merging like this in InDesign before, it’s 500+ members, but it should be a simple data merge and a little tweaking here and there to get the layout to flow correctly. Should be easy enough, right?
