This world is not set up for freelancers. Banks laugh at you when you tell them that you work for yourself at home. Potential landlords wince when you mention that you’ll be paying their mortgage by creating your own work each month. Even the utilities companies, like the phone and hydro all pause for a second too long when you state that you are your own employer. So, it’s always with a great deal of anxiety that I try and secure leases, loans and phone connections. In the past few weeks, I attempted to do two out of the three (I don’t need anymore loans.) And I am happy to report that I was successful on both counts. The reason? Confidence and an absence of the f-word.
“Just don’t say you’re freelance,” my partner warns each time we open the door to our hopefully soon-to-be new apartment. Lucky for her to say. She just landed an in-house job after only a year of doing the f-word (sorry, do I sound bitter?)
Contracting-out has spread through the job market faster than a BC wildfire. More and more people are working from home and for themselves. But freelancing is still a dreaded word to those working inside the 9-5/M-F bubble. It all boils down to insecurity. Those damn morning-trainers want to know where your next paycheque is coming from as much as you do.
There is a particularly life-focusing reaction that freelancers get when they submit their latest invoice and see no immediate work waiting in their inbox. It’s called panic. 9-5ers may have to make horendous commutes, suffer bad coffee, and put up with co-workers whose favourite topic of conversation is who will get voted off the island next, but they are guaranteed a convenient deposit into their bank accounts every other Friday. Staring into the abyss of no future projects will make any freelancer search Monster for a “real job.”
And that’s what landlords, bank managers, and that polite person at the call centre are looking for when they ask, ever so innocently: “And what do you do, Mr. O’Donnell?”
“Well, I work freelance. I, um . . . I, I write.” (You idiot! Everybody friggin’ writes! Tell them what you write.) “I write for kids.” As if that makes it better.
And with an egg timer, you can clock the seconds before the first Harry Potter joke makes an appearence. As tiring as the Potter humour gets, it can sometimes work in my favour. Before old JK became the richest woman in England, landlords took ear-candling as more reliable occupation for their tenants.
But this time around I had no trouble getting a lease and a phone. I spoke with confidence, told them what I did and didn’t say the f-word once. They winced, they paused and just before they suggested the name of a good job agency, I pulled out my secret freelancer’s weapon: my partner.
She gave our landlord her business card, passed along her office number and reassured them that everything would be okay.
The world is not set up for freelancers. That’s why ex-freelancers with in-house jobs are the absolute best.