When meeting with a professional who bills by the hour, an attorney, for instance, people wonder if they are being charged for those colorful tangential tales.

This non-widely-known or uninvented idea for an actual invention would allow the entry of the professionals billing rate and have large readouts of rate, time, elapsed time and accumulated $.

With the professional billing clock, when the professional starts to meander, the client will immediately slap the unbillable button, pausing the accumulation of time and money.  Once the conversation returns to billable, or the client perpetuates nonbillable discussion, the professional would slap the billable button, resuming acumulation.
-- Mustardface, Apr 03 2010

Aurgument over billable service... http://www.youtube....watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y
This idea, and the prompt by [mouseposture], made me think of this... [Jinbish, Apr 03 2010]

Like a taxi-meter then, only based strictly on time (rather than a combination of time and distance travelled) you might even adopt the "extras" concept where additional one-off fares can be charged at the beginning of a fare.
-- zen_tom, Apr 03 2010


I like this ([+]) 'though I think it would degenerate into a meta-argument about whether time spent arguing about whether a particular part of the conversation was billable was, itself, billable.
-- mouseposture, Apr 03 2010


No, i charge a thirty quid flat rate per session and that's it (as a philosopher). As a herbalist, i have a more complex system, but i still charge per session.
-- nineteenthly, Apr 03 2010


Wow! A free lance philosopher!
-- mouseposture, Apr 03 2010


But is he truly free?
-- Jinbish, Apr 03 2010


What, not in the Philosophers Union?!? We'll go on Strike!
-- RayfordSteele, Apr 04 2010


"That was never 5 billable minutes just now." "Yes it was." "No it wasn't!" "Yes it was!" "No it wasn't!" "Yes it was!" "No it wasn't!" "Yes it was!" "No it wasn't!" "Yes it was!" "No it wasn't!" "Yes it was!" "No it wasn't!" "Yes it was!"
-- phundug, Apr 06 2010


(+) <slaps clock>

Cheque!
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Apr 06 2010


Yes, believe it or not, as well as being a herbalist i really am a freelance philosopher. I have only occasionally got anyone to pay me for it, but it has happened and if i could work out how to market it i might be able to make a living out of it.

The question of value is in there somewhere, of course.
-- nineteenthly, Apr 06 2010



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