nope, i make great use of it. i'm watching you try to shave your back now. you missed a spot on the right by your shoulder blade. no, not there, up further. no, you still. more to the left. no, your other left. no, dammit. sigh, nevermind, just forget it.


i'm sure you will find it :)

Slow down on the shrooms! O___o7

Its June 9! But I get it! You just got it all mixed up with YER MAMS!
Missed this post! Checking it out!

Whoah whoah. Whoah. Periscopes, looking up things, battenberg.... What is the world coming to?

Let me pick yer internationally hermitified brains for a moment.

Read this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35857947

Then consider that wage applies to the likes of bar staff, retail workers etc - the absolute bare minimum you can expect in any job as a wage over a certain age.
Now apply this to where you live.
What I want to know is how much of a wage would you expect to see in your own country for similar roles - AND - in comparison - how much would you expect to pay a "skilled worker" - such as a plumber?! (no beef with plumbers btw - i just prefer the term "tradesman" - as they learned a trade).

Well, I could tell you right now that it is a lot less here. As a bartender with minimum wage (provisional, summer) I usually get 4 euros per hour, making it almost 50 euros for a usual of 12 hours per day... Of course, sometimes there are tips, but let's not count those. They're not insane anymore. On the other hand, I'd have to pay a tradesman a minimum of 50 euros PER VISIT, not counting the cost of the actual work done.

wow. so more than ten times what you'd get per hour as a barman, just to turn up. thats fubar!

Isn't it just? :) There are of course people who will charge less. 20 or 30 euros. It's good to know those people. Still, the whole balance is a bit broken, isn't it...
And you can see the whole thing exaggerated even more in places like Canada for instance. A friend of mine was working in a small Toronto based tech support company, and they'd charge hourly rates of 100 to 150 dollars per hour to their customers. And their customers wouldn't mind at all because they were, for example, law firms that would charge 5 to 10 times that to their own customers. Gee, I have no idea how all that can come crashing down... :)

Which is where my issue is right now - as a graphic designer / artist, most competitors are charging £100s for a logo made of free fonts and free custom shapes. Me, I havent put my prices up in years, but the idea was always to keep it fair - and the more hours I work for you, the lower the rate becomes.
So, initially (and under the advice of a few peers and my business mentor bloke), the starting hourly rate was set at either 2.5 or 3 times minimum wage. Now that wage has steadily been increasing as the years have rolled on, but my prices havent gone up in line with it - just one or two bumps. The oncoming "living wage" means my rates are dangerously low considering its a skilled trade - yet i dont want clients walking away due to a price hike.
Hence me asking the question.

I know here plumbers etc can charge extortionate rates for turning a tap off or tightening a washer and I dont want to get that silly.

I know I'd always prefer an honest man that keeps prices sensible. Sensible doesn't mean dirt cheap. If you feel that you're not making a living with what you charge, you're probably within reasonable rights to raise your prices. You'd need to find a balance between what you find reasonable and what your customers find acceptable and I know that this is not always possible. In the end, you're going to lose some win some... but I think as long as you're not overcharging just for the heck of it, or because others are doing it, you're going to stay on the winning side.

Actually, from what ive found, plumbers are in generally shot supply across the world (possibly because career prospects also include sewerage technician?! O___o), so at which point, if thats one of a handful of plumbers for hundreds of thousands of households and businesses, that would make sense (not to belittle your statement - just something i found out earlier).
Tried that. If I charged what others were charging (for essentially free stuff they flopped on page), I'd be sharking people for £100s to start off.

I figure if I charge maybe £50 as a deposit (which i include my first two hours brainstorming into), and leave it at that for now, then I'm good either way. I can adjust as time passes, and whileits a fair hike on the deposit (from £30), itsnot a killer when you consider the base price of a night out for one.

What the flying f

STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRR!

MeeeeeeEEEE? not sure

Well it wasnt the GNU!