Writing quizzes. Part 2

So, after a month of writing quizzes, we had to enter them in to the quiz generator ourself, which made me discover I am working for a checkered employer because of all the advertising. However, entering the quizzes also took more time without extra pay.

Now, the whole idea (I guess) was to enter the quizzes directly and thus save time. But, this is bad on a number of levels. First, you don't have a record of your quiz. It is all saved on the employer's server. Although my work is solely the property of my employer, I need my records for several reasons. I must be able to see what I have already done so that if I need to create similar content, I don't accidentally write something that is the same. I also want proof that I have, in fact, written the work so that the employer can't say I didn't. If I have a time dated Word doc on my computer with the content, I can prove it was mine. I also want records so that if the employer accidentally deletes content, it is easy for me to return it to them (this has happened to me- over a year after finishing a project an employer contacted me to say the documents I sent had been deleted and did I happen to still have a copy of them). Finally, some legal things could come up. If I have to go to court, I want records of what I have done.

Now, in the case of my employer, they wanted us to edit our quizzes with Grammarly. I might be able to download the app into my browser, but I prefer cutting and pasting. It is easier than learning how to use a new tool that may or may not save me time (and that may or may not cost me time by slowing down my browser).

In addition, the website saving process is not all that stable. I did initially try just entering the quizzes, but not only was this bulky, but also I ended up losing at least one quiz and having to start again from scratch. Even a year later, saving is still quirky. It is never worth it to lose work. Saving and backing up is always important. External, small, jump/thumb/flash drives are very nice. Periodically saving important files to CD or other hard storage device (or even printing it out if you have enough room) is also good.

The bottom line was that not only did the employers make the jobs more time consuming (by about 20 minutes to 1 hour) but also they created problems with maintaining a copy. Even if I did not want a copy, it took longer to open and close each question, create new questions, and navigate in the quiz maker. I was disgruntled, but mainly I just chose fewer quizzes and did more outside work. But, quiz work was regular so I kept with it.

Note to employers: If you change the job and make it more difficult, please increase the pay. I am sure my employers lost many good freelancers because of this. I can also tell by the current batch of freelancers that many of them are okay, but definitely not the best.