Ethics: charge for mandatory lunch event?

Subject: Ethics: charge for mandatory lunch event?
From: "Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 08:48:57 -0500

Ken Jacobs reports: <<As a freelancer, I charge by the hour. What is proper
to do when your client takes the doc team out to celebrate a finished
project or for someone's birthday? And you are expected to go (for political
reasons). (I normally brown bag at my desk). Do you charge for the time
since you are expected to be there? Does it matter if the company picks up
the tab or not?>>

Attending would be politically astute because it reinforces your being part
of the team; the fact that they'd invite you in the first place is a really
good sign, and you should preserve that relationship as much as possible by
being "one of the team". As for whether to charge, it probably depends on
your contract with your employer: if you charge for your time on site,
whether or not you're actually working, and your 8-hour work day <g>
includes a paid 1-hour lunch, then there'd be nothing wrong with including
that particular lunch hour in your weekly/monthly invoice; after all, you're
already charging them for your lunch hour, and they've agreed to this.

If your usual lunch is a peanut butter sandwich and the client asks you to
pay your own lunch at a restaurant with a minimum US$40 bill (pre-tip and
pre-tax), it would be fair to decline to attend, pointing out that this kind
of spending simply isn't in your budget--though attending anyway and writing
off the lunch cost as a business expense and investment in your relationship
with the client would be politically wiser. If the client offers to pay your
way, it would be at best ungracious to ask them to pay your time too. Why
turn down a free lunch?

Most important of all, if your billable hours currently include only work
hours--not lunch, and not travel time--then you shouldn't really expect to
be able to charge for the lunch. You haven't done it thus far, and shouldn't
do so now. And heck, look at it this way: you need to eat some time, so why
not cement some relationships while you do so? That's a great way to
encourage future business.

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html

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