I’ve been spending some time looking for writing jobs in the real world… well, not the real real world, still online jobs, only, you know, outside of the blockchain area…
Looks like a scary place and a there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on… First of all, people wanting you to prove your identity and, for instance, schedule an online interview for a lousy editing job… temporary, too. I can send you a sample of my work, take a test if you want - but a whole video interview for a simple job?? It’s not like we’re getting married or anything… (I skipped that site, obviously!)
Then the jobs themselves - what I’m looking for is something I know I’m good at - providing content for some website, editing, translations… that sort of thing.
But I found all sorts of weird stuff… people seem to need help with writing all sorts of things - like the guy that wanted someone to ghostwrite his speech as best man at a friend’s wedding! Really? Can’t you manage to put together a few words about your friend? What sort of friends are you?
Somebody else needed an apology letter.. didn’t bother to look into that… but would you forgive someone who is incapable of writing his own (presumably heartfelt) apology?
Oh, and I almost put in a bid for a ‘freelance writing’ job that turned out to be about picking up something from a location close to the Hong Kong airport! What’s that got to do with writing? How hard can it be to put the correct tags on an add? I was going to ask for $5000 for the whole job, as I expect tickets to Hong Kong to be quite expensive!
Actually, lots of people seem to have trouble with understanding a simple job proposal and you see people from Africa or Asia bidding on a job that clearly specifies it is intended for European writers - not something racist, I’m sure, it was a job where being in Europe was actually important to the job.
Otherwise, I found things we’re very familiar with here on the blockchain - spammers with little knowledge of English bidding for jobs that required fluent English… why bother answering for a job you clearly cannot do?
And the bots, they got bots, too. Literally every job posted gets at least three bids from ‘agencies’ that promise minimal prices and the shortest possible terms…
Fortunately, there are still people fighting the plague of bots and I’ve seen job proposals clearly specifying they don’t want to work with ‘agencies’!
Oh, just as I was writing this another great ‘article writing’ proposal popped up - it involves shipping ‘pills and medicines’ to ‘customers’… ‘someone I can trust!’ the guy says… well, speaking of trust, I’m not interested in shipping any sort of drugs to anyone….
I hate real world!
