I didn’t really have anything in mind to write about for today’s prompt, so I decided to dig through my own experiences and see what I could pull out of it. Then I remembered an editing job my elder sister got but she had quite a lot on her plate at the time, so she pushed the job to me. The only problem I figured was that it came with a 48-hour deadline.
I’m not particularly fond of jobs that are urgent, but whenever I do take them on, I like to negotiate a fair price beforehand. If I’m going to sacrifice sleep, rearrange my schedule and sit with a bulky project for two days straight, I at least want to know that the pay makes the sacrifice worthwhile.
When my sister brought the job to me, though, she wanted to pull the classic “but we’re family” card. Her idea was that I could do it for less because she was my sister, while she would still be taking more than half of what the client was paying. Trust me, I wasn’t buying it.
I don’t like mixing family relationships with business transactions, so I simply told her that when she was ready to discuss the job professionally, she could email me and we would negotiate properly. Well, she was desperate enough for the job to get done, so she eventually emailed me and funny enough, once we took the family relationship out of the conversation and treated it like an actual business transaction, we had a perfectly successful negotiation. We discussed the workload, the deadline and the price, and eventually arrived at something we were both comfortable with.
I did the job. She got it delivered. Then, after everything was over, she jokingly told me on WhatsApp that I wasn’t nice. But honestly, I don’t think being nice should mean consistently short-changing yourself.
If we keep giving discounts, underpricing our work and accepting unfair terms simply because someone is family, how exactly are we supposed to pay our bills? There is a time to be generous with family, and there is a time to recognise that your skills are also part of how you make a living.
For me, once money and business enter the picture, I believe familiarity should take a back seat. Not because I love my family any less, but because clear boundaries actually make these relationships healthier. I could not subject myself to doing bulky jobs for meagre pay while someone else takes the larger share simply because we’re related.
So, I’m glad we established something that will probably save us from future arguments. Whenever my sister gets a job and pushes it to me, she should be prepared to pay me as though I were negotiating directly with the client.
Family is family, business is business and apparently, successful negotiation is knowing when not to let the first one interfere with the second.
