This feels very weird to me and while I’m quite comfortable stating cheerful prices, I’d be quite uncomfortable if someone asked me to “negotiate my cheerful price”.
I think it’s just a problem (just a massive problem) with the wording, though.
You want to discuss your need with me? Cool. Once I understand it really well, you’d like to hear my cheerful price? Cool. You want to
negotiate
my
cheerful price
? Absolutely not, please leave. <-- those are my reactions to the words
It sounds like maybe you feel the word “negotiate” implies that someone is asking you to to be willing to come down on your cheerful price based on their arguments, which (I would completely agree) fully defeats the purpose. If so, maybe you’d prefer if someone asked to “discuss” or “discover” your cheerful price? That’s the sense I’m getting from “negotiate” in this context. (Is that correct, AllAmericanBreakfast?)
Huh, I have strong feelings in the opposite direction!
I think there are a couple different cases here that might produce different reactions.
Being asked your cheerful price for work that’s fairly normal for you and that you’d do for normal market wages. For example, you work as a web designer and are asked your cheerful price for a web design project for a new biotech company.
Being asked your cheerful price for a weird one-off transaction for work that you wouldn’t be willing to do for a “fair price.” For example, the same web designer is asked to do web design for a porn site.
It makes some sense to me that being asked to “negotiate your cheerful price” for #1 could come off as rude somehow. But for #2, I equally think it could be rude to ask them to name their cheerful price, or to engage them in extensive design and price conversations, dangling the promise of a cheerful price at the end that they might not actually be willing to pay.
My cheerful price is sensitive, valuable information, and I won’t give it out to just anybody. Either build trust with me, or offer to pay me to find it out, but don’t ask me to give it to you for free.
My cheerful price is sensitive, valuable information, and I won’t give it out to just anybody.
Wait, what? That sounds less than cheerful to me. My cheerful price is quite high for random tasks from strangers—on the order of $10K/day for non-dangerous, non-reputation-impacting work. I suspect there aren’t many cases where someone would want to pay it, but it’s neither sensitive nor valuable information. And of course, it’s lower for some tasks, for some people, on some days (and much higher for some).
Some confusion may be coming in the (unstated) assumption that one’s cheerful price is a fixed amount. It’s not—it’s highly contextual—it depends on what else one has going on, what expected secondary (monetary or non-) costs or rewards might accrue, relationship effects if it’s among people I expect to meet again, etc.
Honestly, for me, in the financial situation I’m currently in, the concept of “cheerful price” isn’t very useful. My decision-making and happiness is far more impacted by non-monetary factors than payments among non-professional interactions. It’s a cute theory, but I expect there’s not a lot of value in codifying it very completely.
This post was written after the first time I was asked my cheerful price for a certain activity. I noticed that I didn’t have a very cheerful time thinking about what that price would be. I wanted to think more about why. For a piece of work with loosely specified requirements, you might have many “cheerful prices” depending on those requirements. Pinning them down and establishing what those cheerful prices would be, when you don’t actually think it’s very likely that the person asking will agree to your cheerful price, is not very cheerful work. So to make me feel cheerful, you’d really need to make me feel a sense of trust that you’re serious about your offer of a cheerful price.
Absent trust between friends, you can do that with money, by offering to pay me to work out the specs and price for a piece of work.
The concept of a “cheerful price” might be best used in a context of friendship, where the work is easy to explain and aimed at a person who you suspect is happy to at least consider it. But the first time I was asked my “cheerful price” wasn’t in that context, and so I wanted to consider the way you’d think about it outside that context.
This feels very weird to me and while I’m quite comfortable stating cheerful prices, I’d be quite uncomfortable if someone asked me to “negotiate my cheerful price”.
I think it’s just a problem (just a massive problem) with the wording, though.
You want to discuss your need with me? Cool. Once I understand it really well, you’d like to hear my cheerful price? Cool. You want to
negotiate
my
cheerful price
? Absolutely not, please leave. <-- those are my reactions to the words
It sounds like maybe you feel the word “negotiate” implies that someone is asking you to to be willing to come down on your cheerful price based on their arguments, which (I would completely agree) fully defeats the purpose. If so, maybe you’d prefer if someone asked to “discuss” or “discover” your cheerful price? That’s the sense I’m getting from “negotiate” in this context. (Is that correct, AllAmericanBreakfast?)
Huh, I have strong feelings in the opposite direction!
I think there are a couple different cases here that might produce different reactions.
Being asked your cheerful price for work that’s fairly normal for you and that you’d do for normal market wages. For example, you work as a web designer and are asked your cheerful price for a web design project for a new biotech company.
Being asked your cheerful price for a weird one-off transaction for work that you wouldn’t be willing to do for a “fair price.” For example, the same web designer is asked to do web design for a porn site.
It makes some sense to me that being asked to “negotiate your cheerful price” for #1 could come off as rude somehow. But for #2, I equally think it could be rude to ask them to name their cheerful price, or to engage them in extensive design and price conversations, dangling the promise of a cheerful price at the end that they might not actually be willing to pay.
My cheerful price is sensitive, valuable information, and I won’t give it out to just anybody. Either build trust with me, or offer to pay me to find it out, but don’t ask me to give it to you for free.
Wait, what? That sounds less than cheerful to me. My cheerful price is quite high for random tasks from strangers—on the order of $10K/day for non-dangerous, non-reputation-impacting work. I suspect there aren’t many cases where someone would want to pay it, but it’s neither sensitive nor valuable information. And of course, it’s lower for some tasks, for some people, on some days (and much higher for some).
Some confusion may be coming in the (unstated) assumption that one’s cheerful price is a fixed amount. It’s not—it’s highly contextual—it depends on what else one has going on, what expected secondary (monetary or non-) costs or rewards might accrue, relationship effects if it’s among people I expect to meet again, etc.
Honestly, for me, in the financial situation I’m currently in, the concept of “cheerful price” isn’t very useful. My decision-making and happiness is far more impacted by non-monetary factors than payments among non-professional interactions. It’s a cute theory, but I expect there’s not a lot of value in codifying it very completely.
This post was written after the first time I was asked my cheerful price for a certain activity. I noticed that I didn’t have a very cheerful time thinking about what that price would be. I wanted to think more about why. For a piece of work with loosely specified requirements, you might have many “cheerful prices” depending on those requirements. Pinning them down and establishing what those cheerful prices would be, when you don’t actually think it’s very likely that the person asking will agree to your cheerful price, is not very cheerful work. So to make me feel cheerful, you’d really need to make me feel a sense of trust that you’re serious about your offer of a cheerful price.
Absent trust between friends, you can do that with money, by offering to pay me to work out the specs and price for a piece of work.
The concept of a “cheerful price” might be best used in a context of friendship, where the work is easy to explain and aimed at a person who you suspect is happy to at least consider it. But the first time I was asked my “cheerful price” wasn’t in that context, and so I wanted to consider the way you’d think about it outside that context.