Careful with these people? They're sometimes unpredictable or inappropriate, possibly litigious. I just want out of the contract next week as agreed.
I'm a core part of a project that won't be realized because of covid-19. In this one case, that's good. Sadly it's been a contentious, ultra-micromanaged, deeply exhausting project over its first few months, and I'm so grateful my contract gives me an elegant out.
(Contract says that if enough funds haven't been raised by the 31st of March, my work on the project won't start – in fact I've already spent 60+ hours on prep work, emotional labor/arguments, and our 20+ hours of Zooms & calls across the winter, for which I wasn't and won't ever be paid yes, huge lesson learned there]. There's no provision for postponement in the contract; the project just doesn't happen if it's not funded to at least the specified minimum level by the 31st.)
The organizers are still desperately trying to raise enough funding, both on social media (of course tagging me each time, in public posts) and via DMs to my/our colleagues, using language I find distressing – e.g. the emotion tag for the most recent post is "feeling anxious" and the text is about "how stressed" they are because there's only a week left to raise the funds (people are dying horrible deaths alone, in an exponential curve, and you're posting about being so anxious and stressed about a project that has nothing even to do with health?). I feel embarrassed both for them and by them, that they're doing this in my name and DMing my valued colleagues possibly with similar language.
They will not raise enough funds (explaining why I'm so sure of this would be too un-anonymizing. but our profession is in deep crisis and uncertainty right now, this is a specialized funding process where only a small subset of our direct colleagues would be interested in buying into the project, and it's still many thousands short).
They've already shown themselves to be possibly litigious (e.g. months ago they sent me an email, when my level and speed of communication weren't acceptable to them – and again, I've never received any compensation for ANY of my communication, emotional labor, or Zoom calls with them – claiming I was in breach of contract for not communicating proactively enough and saying they'd been "documenting" all the ways I was not communicating to their satisfaction). This project has been a central part of their life for half a year – they are ultra invested in ownership of it and they just expected me to dive in with the same commitment before any guarantee of pay.
I'm looking for things I should either actively do or be careful about. I want to 1) not get sued; 2) have this relationship just end, as neutrally as possible; and 3) spend as little further time/effort on this as I possibly can, because I'm really overwhelmed with issues like closed elementary school, lockdown, and loved ones becoming variously sick.
Two specific questions:
1) They're now insisting I do a FB Live video event about how excited I am for the project, to promote the fundraising. I absolutely won't do this. Should I say I'm not willing to? So far I haven't responded except to (accurately) say, "Unfortunately I have a bad cold (non-covid)."
2) This is a project based around me and one other person (people are funding it to support our specific work). She and I have the same contract and the same gratitude to be escaping it soon. It's totally clear that even if the funds were somehow raised, neither of us would be able to realize the project in the agreed timeframe, due to how much our circumstances and available worktime have unexpectedly changed for spring. So should we be clear about that, or just wait out the week with my 99% certainty the funds won't appear?
I don't want to work with these organizers again. They have good visbility in our profession, about equal to mine, though they inspire mixed reactions (I was warned against working with them – sadly didn't listen because at the start of this I both trusted them and really cared about the project idea). It's not my style to be public about this kind of conflict, but it might well be their style, and they're clearly sometimes very emotional and/or unprofessional. That deeply stresses and unnerves me and I just don't have the emotional overhead for it right now. |
Video
Web
Image
Music
BlogU
