I've been wondering what life would be like if my cash income was $500 to $1,000 every day, in today's society.
As the seventies ended, my standard billing rate was $65 an hour. I was kind of famous for that because I started that rate on my first big IBM Sys 38 contract with Interocean Steamship, and kept it there for years.
As my reputation grew, people knew they would get a state of the art system, and they knew how much it would cost them. I was very busy in the San Francisco Bay Area, as the eighties arrived.
One day, the owner of a local bus charter company contacted me. His new business model was to pick up Japanese families at SFO, drop the women and kids off at fancy hotels downtown, then take the men to the strip clubs.
After the men got good and drunk, with all the tities in their face they could handle, they were picked up and taken to the hotels.
The idea caught on big time and business began booming. The charter company already had a stock IBM Sys 38, running accounting, routing, and everything else. But they needed a custom module to plug in and handle this new line of business.
And they needed it right now. I told the owner it would take two weeks to create the mod, but I was booked solid.
He was well aware of my rate reputation and asked me what it would cost to put all of my current jobs on hold for two weeks, and do it.
I told him $250 an hour in cash, payable at the end of each day. He agreed, and every day as I was winding down, I told them how much time I was billing, and the cash was handed to me by the receptionist as I walked out the door. In an envelope...
I usually put in eight hours so that was two grand in my pocket every day.
On a side note, I didn't respect the whole thing. The idea that the men were the providers and since their women were notoriously lacking in the boob department, they deserved a night at the strip clubs.
I was married for ten years to a brilliant Japanese woman named Marci, graduated second in her class from UC Berkeley. She had small tits but they tasted good. So did the rest of her.