Maybe It Is Me

The last couple of days Joe Klocek and I have been trading emails. He tells me that he's going to let the website die and make a new one that people can spell. I ask if he wants me to do it, I already know the answer, he says he has a new guy. I say fine and go about my day.

Today I go onto the server site to take down the pages to find that he's paid for another year. I send him an email to the effect of I was taking down the site and I saw you had paid for another year, what gives?

I get back: Don't take down the site, people need to reach me online.

I wrote back and reminded him that the graphics and text are mine. (This had come up a couple of years ago, at the time I had made it clear that I had made the site for free therefore if he didn't want me to be his web person anymore then I would be taking all the site info with me.)

He was pissed. I also reminded him that the reason that I had done the site for free for him, was with the understanding that when he had the money, he would pay me. However it seems that now that he's making money he doesn't keep his promises. And he wants to use my hard work to help out the new guy whom he's paying.

Frankly, fuck that noise.

We went back and forth with him writing things about how I didn't put up his info fast enough (which in a few cases happened, it's free what did he expect?) and the fact that he helped me move, twice and that he listened to me meant nothing.

I wrote back, telling him that I thought that was a friendship thing and if it wasn't he should have said so. I also pointed out that I had offered to help him move, I had listened to him also that's what friends do.

The first time that this came up, I had told him that I thought we needed to keep business and friendship separate (he wanted to drop the business part altogether) by sending business emails separate from friendly emails. He thought that was too much work.

The problem with him is that nothing is fast enough or easy enough (except perhaps his girlfriend! Kerpow, baby!) he has no patience. He wants it done now. If I hadn't checked my email in a few hours he would call me up and tell me it was there. I was supposed to drop everything to update his site and the only "payment" I got was the occasional lunch and into clubs for free.

When he didn't answer my last email I went onto MySpace and found that he had removed me from his friend list.

A very adult move.

You tell me, was I out of line for wanting my work back? Should I have let him take the site and pay someone new in silence and not remind him that we had a verbal contract? Was he out of line to get so angry with me when I did what I told him I was going to do?

Maybe I am being selfish, that site was hard work and it seems to me that if he's going to start paying a guy then that guy should start from scratch and earn his money. The thing is, Joe has no idea how much work goes into making a site from the ground up.

I think he might have been looking for away to "break up with me" since he got back together with that cunt that broke his heart.