Tricked Into Freelancing

I work in the interior home industry.

Colleague: “Hey, can you produce this custom artwork for my own personal home?”

Me: “Not really. This isn’t customer-paying work and I can’t do private jobs during working hours. We’re also super busy with paying jobs at the moment and already have weeks of overtime ahead of us. If you like, though, you’re welcome to contact me outside of work and I can send you a quote.”

The colleague emails details over, doesn’t like the very modest quote provided, and decides not to proceed. No worries.

The next day in the office…

Colleague: “Great news! I went direct to our CEO, who’s agreed to let you do this on company time! I only have to pay them half what you quoted me this way! Amazing, right?”

Me: *Internally* “Yeah, amazing… You’ve done this knowing full well you’re adding to my overtime. Plus, our work hourly rate means I won’t be compensated properly for the personal time I need to spend on this. So happy for you.”

Fortunately, I was able to speak to the CEO and got this job canceled due to an already over-stretched workload. I have no idea why this colleague thought I would be happy about being paid less for the same work.