Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Associated Content

Obviously, I've not been frequenting this blog very often. I've been freelance writing more and more which limits my time, but I've also found that I can get paid to vent my frustrations at Associated Content

Join Associated Content

In all honesty, I'd rather vent and get paid for it. So anyone looking to read up on my latest happenings is welcome to go to AC. If you can write, I highly recommend signing up with them while you are there. They take anything from game reviews to television show recaps to town information and travel guides.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Oh, Boy. Guess I've Been Busy

I just noticed I've let a month slip without posting. Sorry for those who do come in and read. I have been busy writing travel articles and trying to catch up with reading!

I did have a warning to send out today. Recently a job posting appeared in Craigslist within many cities. The company was/is looking for restaurant evaluators - think mystery shopping only for a restaurant. I was excited and signed up. Within hours I had the necessary forms, only after reading them two contradicting terms made me leery. Thankfully, I'd not yet sent the W-9, so they didn't have any of my SS information.

The company had two contracts for you to sign. One stated that you were not an employee so that made you able to work for any of their competition providing you keep information regarding your jobs and their paperwork format private - copyright laws and all that. I had no problem with this.

However, in the second contract it stated that you could not own, work for, contract for, consult for, be an officer for, or manage any other restaurant evaluation firm to a term of two years. Failing to meet this term made you open to lawsuit. I emailed them immediately and the woman claimed that the form only means you cannot own another firm within two years. I became very worried over this term because it clearly states more than "owning" per the "consult for," "contract with," and "work for." I'm not willing to risk a lawsuit because of their unclear terms.

Anyway, it wasn't a day later that the account I used to apply for the job started filling up with spam even with my spam filters turned on. I try to use a private Yahoo account for things off of Craigslist and I hadn't used this account for anything yet. For it to suddenly be filling up with dozens of "Evaluate hotels," "Become a mystery shopper," "mystery shop at restaurants," etc. I am pretty certain they took my email and then sold it. That ticks me off and I informed Craigslist of it.

For this reason, I am warning others who may have seen this ad from Restaurant Evaluators, don't bother! The spam truly isn't worth it! I'm up to my 47th spam message today and am clicking away constantly to beef up my spam filters.