Lexicoblog

The occasional ramblings of a freelance lexicographer

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Email faux pas

Last week, I sent an email to an in-house editor to chase up an invoice that I'd sent but hadn't heard back about. Having had problems with a previous invoice on the same project, I just wanted confirmation it'd been put through okay. This morning, while I was putting together my mental to-do list over breakfast, I realised that I still hadn't heard anything. So when I sat down at my desk, another, this time more urgent, email was top of my list. Then just as I waiting for my computer to start up and was composing what I was going to say in my head, it suddenly occurred to me that I might've sent my last message to the wrong person ... the editor in question has a very similar name to someone else I've worked with at a different publisher and of course, they're right next to each other in my address book. Lo and behold, when I went back to look at my sent items, I had indeed got them muddled up!

I sent off a quick email to the right person and soon got a message back to apologise for not replying and saying that the invoice had gone through - relief. Now, I'm just wondering whether or not I should drop the other editor a quick message to explain and apologise for the random email? The fact that it's been nearly a week and he's said nothing, makes me think he probably just deleted it, so perhaps it's better not to draw attention to my stupidity!

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Wednesday, May 04, 2011

What counts as work?

When I'm working, I usually keep a note of the hours I work on each project each day in my diary. It's partly to keep track of what I need to invoice for and also to keep an eye on the number of hours I'm working each week from a health point of view. I only write down hours spent on "actual work" that I'm going to invoice for though.

Yesterday, I managed to spend more-or-less the whole day at my desk without writing down a single hour in my diary. It was a day spent catching up on "admin"; checking over the work I've done while I was away, sending it off with accompanying emails and invoices, replying to non-urgent e-mails that I hadn't dealt with, getting together a new bookkeeping folder for the new tax year and getting going on a couple of new projects - looking at documents, reading briefs and sending more emails with answers and queries. It felt like a really productive day and by the end of it, I felt like I was back on top of things after nearly 3 weeks away. I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed though that I had no hours written in my diary to show for it!

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