I do a lot of freelance work, and some of it I do for friends – though not blindly.

There needs to be a good amount of trust built up, and also some very clear terms, otherwise things can get ugly.

Ugly like the story of a wedding which – beautiful or no – we’ll never see, ’cause all the pics got destroyed.

Check it out.

AITA for deleting my friend’s wedding photos in front of them?

I’m not really a photographer, I’m a dog groomer.

I take lots of photos of dogs all day to put on my Facebook and Instagram, it’s “my thing” if that makes sense.

A cut and a photo with every appointment. I very seldom shoot things other than dogs even if I have a nice set up.

Still, they decided to make an exception for a friend.

A friend got married a few days ago and wanting to save money, asked if I’d shoot it for them.

I told him it’s not really my forte but he convinced me by saying he didn’t care if they were perfect: they were on a shoestring budget and I agreed to shoot it for $250, which is nothing for a 10 hour event.

Typically, a wedding photographer’s job doesn’t end on that day, either.

There’s at least a few hours of sorting through the pics, making edits, etc.

This person is working for around $15/hour, which is so far below a real photography rate it’s insane.

On the day of, I’m driving around following the bride as she goes from appointment to appointment before the ceremony, taking photos along the way.

I shoot the ceremony itself, and during the reception I’m shooting speeches and people mingling.

I started around 11am and was due to finish around 7:30pm.

Around 5pm, food is being served and I was told I cannot stop to eat because I need to be photographer; in fact, they didn’t save me a spot at any table.

I’m getting tired and at this point kinda regretting doing this for next to nothing.

It’s also unbelievably hot: the venue is in an old veteran’s legion and it’s like 110F and there’s no AC.

So it seems like they kinda cut ALL the corners, huh?

I told the groom I need to take off for 20min to get something to eat and drink.

There’s no open bar or anything, I can’t even get water and my two water bottles are long empty.

He tells me I need to either be photographer, or leave without pay.

With the heat, being hungry, being generally annoyed at the circumstances, I asked if he was sure, and he said yes, so I deleted all the photos I took in front of him and took off saying I’m not his photographer anymore.

If I was to be paid $250, honestly at that point I would have paid $250 just for a glass of cold water and somewhere to sit for 5min.

Absolute scorched earth.

Was I the [jerk]?

They went right on their honeymoon and they’ve all been off of social media, but a lot of people have been posting on their wall asking about photos with zero responses.

Let’s get a snapshot of the comments:

Hey, he gave you a choice, and you made it.

Like, what is this?

Don’t poke the hangry bear.

Let’s be super clear, even if you’re paying someone a good, or even GREAT rate, it’s not reasonable (and likely not even legal) to refuse them a dinner break on a 10 hour shift, or some dang water in the heat.

This is just entitlement to the nth degree.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.