Sticky Wicket

A few weeks back I picked up a last-minute booking to shoot a cricket match. Peak summer. And I'll be honest — I'm not a huge cricket fan. But I'm not one to turn down a job, especially when the client has accepted my payment terms, signed the contract and sent the deposit.

The booked hours were 15:30 to 18:30.

I knew almost as soon as I arrived that we weren't going to keep to that. And as the clock crept towards 18:30, it became obvious the match wasn't finishing in time.

Nobody came to speak to me about it. Not a word about the overrun, no question about my availability, no mention of extending. The only communication I received all afternoon was someone suggesting I change my camera angle. 🤷🏽‍♂️

I waited until 18:45. Then I made a call — packed up my spot and started heading for the exit.

That's when three separate people asked me to stay for "ten more minutes."

I knew what ten more minutes meant. The match finishing, then the trophy presentation, then team photos, then the sponsors. That's an hour, easily. And I was already fifteen minutes past my contracted time, unpaid.

I stood there genuinely torn about it. And then I noticed the thing that made the decision for me: not one person had asked whether they could pay me to stay.

I was still turning it over on the drive home. But I kept landing in the same place — I had to protect my time and the value of my work.

A friend later suggested I could have handled it differently. Proposed an addendum on the spot, quoted an hourly extension, negotiated it myself. He's not wrong. But that's a fix for next time, not a failure this time. The responsibility to renegotiate sat with the client, and they had the entire afternoon to pick it up.

What I've taken from it, practically: an overtime clause goes in every contract from now on — extra time billed in thirty-minute blocks, agreed in writing before it starts. And a soft heads-up at the thirty-minute mark, so the decision lands with them while there's still room to make one.

What I've taken from it, less practically: saying no felt like a professional failure when it was the exact opposite.

Ten years in, and it still felt like that.

I don't think the discomfort means I got it wrong. I think it's just what a boundary feels like the first few times you hold one.