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Is it ethical to hire my daughter for this?

Asked by wundayatta (58722points) November 10th, 2010

I have a client who has absolutely no knowledge of SPSS. I hope his partner has more knowledge, but that’s not the point. They needed to do some massaging of the data, and I did it all, except one last step, which would require someone to do the same boring thing 256 times. You could probably do 2 or 3 per second.

He doesn’t want to do it. He wants me to find someone to do it. A graduate student? Puhleeze! My 14 year old daughter… hell, my 10 year old son could do this in ten minutes at most.

Now we usually don’t do paid work. We are a service organization and I’m not into becoming some kind of supervisor, but this guy clearly is clueless. We always charge at least an hour, and then in half hour increments. Our internal rate is $100 per hour, I think.

Would it be reasonable or ethical to have one of my kids come in to do this and charge him $100? I’m just doing him a favor by finding labor for him, which is not something I’m supposed to do. Well, I can make referrals. Is it ok to refer my daughter? If so, I have to tell him, since he’d need to know how to make the check out. Oops. Child labor laws. Maybe. Well, I don’t know how grant accounting goes.

What do you think—both as a general principle and as a specific case? Do I have to find a grad student or could I use my underage kids? Do I charge the full rate?

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