In this dog-eat-dog world of freelance writing, sometimes a girl needs to take on just about any assignment she can get her hands on.

That is, unless the assignment proves to be…well, let’s say harder than one thought.

A friend of mine edits a major city website and assigned me to write some online profiles for a number of businesses. All said and done, an $800 job for maybe 15 hours of work. Some web research, a few phonecalls, a pilgrimage or two. Not entirely shabby. All of the businesses that she assigned in this batch were spas. So being the enterprising young lady that I am, I decided that I was going to ask the spas for freebie treatments. You know, like a mini-facial or an express manicure or maybe a touch of gratis waxing.

I started to do some research on the businesses assigned and was coming up suspiciously empty. Then…a horrible thought struck me. It was confirmed with a phonecall that went a little something like this:

Me: Hi there, I was just wondering how much you charge for a manicure/pedicure.

Her: Oh…we don’t have those here.

Me: Oh. Okay. Thank you!

The remaining spas had answering machine messages that used phrases like “best massage in the city”, “classy” and “very clean”.

These spas were not beauty parlours. They were massage parlours.

I had been accidentally assigned to write about 20 rub ‘n’ tugs.

Fun rub ‘n’ tug factoid: Did you know that the going rate is $40 per 30 minutes, $80 per hour (reverse…whatever that means) and $120 for “VIP treatment”? Well now you do, superstar!