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8f51dc45
Community Member

Freelancer disappearing?

What do you do when a very consistent freelancer (over several months) disappears in the middle of a job? I am worried about him because he has not been into Upwork for exactly one week and he was as regular as clockwork before. I would have thought if this was vacation (or similar) he would have said something? Any thoughts appreciated. Thank you.

ACCEPTED SOLUTION
AleksandarD
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Neil,

 

I shared your concern with the rest of our team and one of our agents already reached out to you directly via this support ticket to assist you further.

 

Thank you.

~ Aleksandar
Upwork

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6 REPLIES 6
AleksandarD
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Neil,

 

I shared your concern with the rest of our team and one of our agents already reached out to you directly via this support ticket to assist you further.

 

Thank you.

~ Aleksandar
Upwork

Thank you!

prestonhunter
Community Member

re: "What do you do when a very consistent freelancer (over several months) disappears in the middle of a job?"

 

What you do is up to you.

 

What do you do if you are accustomed to buying Betty's Best Brownies at your local grocery store, and suddenly they aren't available?

 

re: "I am worried about him because he has not been into Upwork for exactly one week and he was as regular as clockwork before. I would have thought if this was vacation (or similar) he would have said something? Any thoughts appreciated."

 

You are a client, not an employer.

 

This freelancer does not live where you live. This freelancer has friends, neighbors, family, people at his gym, church and book club who all know him and care about him. You are not in that category. You cant do anything. It is not appropriate to contact Upwork about concern for a freelancer's well-being based on a freelancer not doing any work for you for a week.

 

The simple truth is that the freelancer is probably fine. Maybe he got a full time job. Maybe he won the lottery. Maybe he was in a horrible accident and is in the hospital. Maybe he adopted playful puppies. Nothing you can do about it either way.

 

My recommendation is to not think about what's happening with the freelancer. Don't be concerned about imagined calamities. If you have work that needs to get done, assign that work to other team members.

With an attitude like that, this will be absolutely foreign to you but when you work closely with an other individual over several months on several jobs - regardless of where they are located - you develop a working relationship (of sorts) that is very similar to other virtual employees I've never met. The fact that we are in the middle of a job and he disappears gives me the right to 'worry' about how this job will now get done and, by extension, if he's okay and will be coming back. Your callous remark "Maybe he was in a horrible accident and is in the hospital" ... who cares? **Edited for Community Guidelines** Enjoy your life ... 

Preston, you use UW in a strictly transactional way. That seems to work for you and that's fine. Many of the rest of us operate in a more relational way, maintaining professional boundaries while also forming personal relationships of varying closeness with people we work closely with over months and years. Now, particularly, admidst a pandemic that is claiming lives daily, many of us worry -- appropriately IMO -- about a sudden, unexplained absence. Even here in the US where large swaths of our population manage to stay insulated from many types of disasters, I know people with friends and relatives who have fallen ill and succumbed within the space of 1-2 weeks. I also happen to know at least one UW colleague who lost a close collaborator in another country recently, the person became and ill and died rather suddenly leaving a spouse and several children behind. 

 

Please think before you comment, and avoid being so callous.


Preston H wrote:

It is not appropriate to contact Upwork about concern for a freelancer's well-being based on a freelancer not doing any work for you for a week..


I must have missed that recent rule change that forbids a client to reach out to Upwork over such a matter. Would you be so kind to point us towards where Upwork have declared it to be inappropriate? 


Or is that you once again telling clients what is and isn't appropriate on Upwork*s behalf when there is no such thing and a moderator has already arranged for the OP to be contacted?

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