Hey kids,
So, about three times a week – sometimes more, sometimes less, – I'm required to piss someone off or give them a slight. It's not that I want to make them feel bad, it's that they completely ignored the terms of service and other pages they agreed to which state not to text me, use chat, or use social media to contact me through, excluding emergencies, and to use email only to prevent me losing threads or following up, and allow me to keep business in one place, while also limiting contact which may reach an abusive level. I have to say this because having gotten access to some chat service, they ignore the rules, and try to enjoy easy access to me via these services, which if I leave this breach of the rules unchecked turns into something pretty shitty for me…25 or more unpaid hours chatting. So, to put this in perspective, I already work an average of 60 hours a week. I am expected – with no increase in pay – to add 25 hours to this. And no, the single client may not be the cause of 25 hours, but in some cases, yeah I'll even get a single client who, feeling they have unfettered access and I have no clients or life outside of them, will just go ham.
But it's actually even worse than just working way more for the same amount. It also means that I have to check chats on several platforms (many of which I don't look at even weekly, like Whatsapp,) or that people think they have unfettered access because they can text me, when in reality, I'm a terrible texter and take hours and days to respond to people I personally know and love (so for business, it's even riskier.)
Obviously no one likes to be told that their chatting with me is work to me, and I personally feel like a real jerk because as much as I may like the client, there's a million non-work things I want to do with whatever time i have outside of work, and talking about someone's emotional issues and relationship issues isn't really fun for me, especially after doing just that for pay for all the hours I worked. Plus, it's my paying job, so much like I'm sure you don't want to work 25 hours more at your job for no increase in pay (or even 3 hours more for no increase in pay,) I do not want this either.
And my friends who work in my industry make similar complaints. This is our job. It isn't volunteer work. I have posted days off, for example, and I get non stop texts and inquiries and have even had people pissed off when I didn't do a scheduling request on my day off (Sunday,) because I figured it wasn't an emergency and could wait til Monday. This literally led to an epic battle and chargeback, and it was my sole "error" and not even an error. She lost the chargeback dispute lol.
What makes this all the more irritating is some people think I'm a free research tool. Well, this is also my job. I'm pretty dang thorough in explaining things in my writing. But if you want to know what plants correspond to Jupiter, tor what offerings this spirit likes, or why this event may have happened after you cast x or y spell….here's these neat things called books, and this other great thing called google, and you might actually use those instead of expecting a live person to tell you…since basically you are asking that live person to work by doing so (I don't enjoy spending my free time working for no pay any more than anyone else,) and getting frustrated in many cases when they don't want to spend their free time helping you for hours for no compensation. While I'm willing to explain my own written work to clarify for free (which is it's own tedium but helps me be more concise in the future,) and even answer a few questions here and there, if I'm asked general questions that require long answers, I may point you to the QYAM archive or you may wait.
Answering questions directly regarding paid spellwork is something I do, but even then if the support becomes egregious and takes up more than a specific amount of hours in my week, that is considered abuse.
Why? It's my paying job, and if I'm working for below the federal minimum wage (making $2/hr or something,) that's abusive on the part of the client, and not a situation where I can sustain paying my bills on that wage.
But here's the thing – THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO ENGAGE IN THESE PRACTICES IN NO WAY WISH TO BE ABUSIVE OR ILL-MANNERED! Instead, they don't really realize what they are doing.
So, let's compare this to something. Let's say a person who works above you in your company realizes you like the same hobby they are just beginning to take an interest in. They have very little knowledge and ask if they can ask your advice from time to time. As they pay your check, and because you have no idea that they mean "be my free on demand tutor", you agree and give this person your cell number. Almost immediately you are asked questions like why people do this thing like this, and the history of that, and did you ever make this, and what does this mean….the moment you leave work til 1am, and then when you wake before work, you are being asked about this hobby. Of course, you don't want to be rude, as this person pays your check, but this is a lot of extra work and you'd much rather be spending time with your romantic partner or doing things you like doing rather than say, explaining the history of crochet to Bill from accounting for 4 hours one night. And then of course, it worsens because they start to just casually hit you up and ask your opinion on things which are perhaps related but not the hobby itself. Of course, when you finally say you are really busy, and try to explain the situation, this person becomes incredibly defensive, and now you get demoted, or get a really bad quarterly review.
That's hugely abusive. Anyone would agree.
But when it comes to people in my job, it's considered okay to hit us up on chat or text and ask why this clearly fraudulent and awful spell from tiktok says it will do x thing, and didn't do anything, and to make me describe how none of the elements of the spell line up with any established magical practice historically, how no practitioner would say it was a real spell, that some pretty adolescent girl clearly made it up so she could pretend to be a witch, and that really even a novice could tell it's not real…which of course takes a huge discourse and discussion to explain this without hurting feelings, plus you also need to discuss their feelings about the spell etc. This isn't rare, and you bet that 90 minutes later, when I've lost all that time discussing something that has very little to do with anything I want to do with my free time, the person asking may be satisfied, but I'm screwed out of 90 minutes of free time which may have been the only 90 minutes I had to do the things I like doing…so I can work, do housework and sleep today? Ah shit, I actually needed 30 of those minutes to clean so now I even have to take away 30 minutes of sleep because you liked a clearly fake garbage spell and insisted I spend 90 minutes I kind of didn't have to explain it's fakeness and reassure you.
BUT the client has this idea that this is normal and healthy because they have easy access to me via social media chat or text. This familiarity is like the business example above where, having agreed to help when the person needed a little help on a hobby turned into a full time job explaining everything and anything that crossed the mind of the other person…and when asked to halt this, hurt the feelings of the person being abusive as it FEELS LIKE YOU ARE CONTACTING A CLOSE FRIEND. It loses it's professionalism here.
People really like feeling like we are more like friends rather than client and worker. And I adore many of my clients and can even have fun chatting sometimes…but at the end of the day, we need to make it so neither of us is absorbing the other's day on any frequent level.
So, ask yourself this – are you asking for a lot of assistance on a paid service? If you are a paying client, of course I agree you should be able to have questions pertaining to the the service answered. If it's not an emergency, however, you should not expect an immediate answer. You have to keep in mind that the person performing this service has a lot of other clients and may need time to respond. If it IS an emergency, you should be capable of telling the person that it is INCREDIBLY TIME SENSITIVE, rather than you feel bad or scared or upset which makes it feel like an emergency, perhaps, but really often is just you being emotional and not one. "I had a scary dream last night," is not an emergency. I had one woman who literally disrupted an entire courtroom during a civil property case I was involved in because she was having a meltdown that a man she had broken up with a year ago was now dating new people (which actually made him realize how much he missed her, and he returned! It wasn't even a bad thing!) This was very abusive of her. She was blocked on my phone thereafter, and honestly, she's a lovely person, she was very embarrassed and I appreciate her allowing me to use it as an example, lol. ALSO KEEP IN MIND THE CONTENT OF YOUR REQUEST. No one should be expected to reassure you every moment, of course (and plenty of people ask me to help them when they have the most trivial of concerns, and can quickly become problematic,) but if you're repetitively asking HOW spells work or WHY something is happening, it's really a bit off when you have my huge corpus of work that explains all those things, but if you're like an abusive person I'd fired because she made me repeat over and over the same concepts, then looked up some of the worst advice on the internet and made me explain why it was wrong, – and basically, not only had I explained everything 20 times over (often on the same day, but every day she contacted me,) I was also constantly expected to act as free therapy. No where in my job description does "FREE THERAPIST" come up. In fact, it clearly states in my TOS that I am not your therapist. Further, while of course I want you to understand what's going on if you have questions, nowhere in my job description is the title FREE TUTOR. I've spent years of my life writing this blog. It is so full of info it is bursting.
BUT, tell someone to keep contact to email and on topic, and explain patiently that over familiarity can create a toxic situation where I am expected to work an extra amount of time one might work at a part time job TOTALLY UNPAID, and that I like to have some time to myself…and I'm the bad guy.
TUTORING (spell coaching, one on one teaching,) is a job.
THERAPIST (reassuring, helping get through your emotional issues, cheering you on, explaining basic psych) is a job
If you want to PAY ME to do either, then I will gladly help you. But neither is a free service, nor should anyone working as a practitioner for hire be expected to do either for free.
If you keep that in mind, and be respectful of my time or your worker's time, you won't ever need to worry that you're a burden or that you've become abusive.
Hopefully that explains things,
~Cat
Cat’s Rants: Confessions of an Occult Mastermind 
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