I faxed my resume to them blindly, saying that I was available to complete their documentation needs or some other writing-related bullshit that they would pay me for. The next day I received a call at 8, requesting that I interview ASAP. At 10 a.m., I entered the building.

The place screamed, �We squander money!�

The entire front of the building was made of glass and the ceiling was forty feet high, not economical cooling-wise in the dead of a Texas summer. (Don�t get me started on how this first room had a glass-ceiling euphemism all over it...)

Furniture-wise, the front room was filled with dead-cows, all sorts of pricey marketing nick-knacks, and the corner had a large, flat screen TV blaring Samsung propaganda at everyone around.

�Everyone around� encompasses the two overly-blonde secretaries and me, in my non-suit and non-cow business bag.

The HR rep meets me and takes me to another dead-cow room, where I put on my best consultant face (thoughtful, interested, and competent) and calmly ask what his documentation problems are.

I try to keep from laughing at his hysterics and how simple the solution is. Because I�m in the business of selling solutions, I boost the thoughtful part of my consultant face. I break down the game plan for him: I can create a customized template system that will automate the process of formatting the 1,800 pages of documents he needs ASAP. And then I can ensure that this template gets applied to all of the documents.

When can you start? And, by the way, what�s your rate?

This is where I�d normally say that I could sell him the solution for $1,500, giving him the opportunity to hire two temps to copy and paste my bullshit to the Word docs. But then I remembered the electricity bill to cool the glass room, the expensive cow pelts all around me, and the SONY flat screen in the lobby. This company had money to burn, and I was gonna help them burn it.

You can say that perhaps it was the vegetarian-to-be in me that wanted me to avenge the death of the poor cows in all of the rooms, or you can say that I saw a man in need and had him fooled.

Being able to read a man as quickly as a Grisham novel, I named my price, watched his reaction of �I�m so fucked if I do, but even more fucked if I don�t,� let him talk me down five dollars per hour, and then started at 3 p.m. while I signed my paperwork and pissed in a cup between now and then.

At the beginning of the next week I set up the $1,500 template system in about an hour and then spent the next five weeks highlighting and inserting for 50 hours a week, bringing in more than one template system of pay per week.

Damn I�m good. �