Loosing a potential assignment

The seasonal lack of missions over the years has already been covered somewhere else in lofty style reminiscent of farmers' talk by some conference interpreters. I have never read about loosing a potential assignment and what it feels like. It is time to create a precedent. Fees were the final issue, as reported back by the agency whose unique role would have been to cash a commission for finding me among "our worldwide team of tested interpreters", a cheese with many holes. I had never been tested nor approached by that agency before. The deal direct could have been mine. Anyway, it is still encouraging that non-Japanese agencies are potential conduits of jobs when Japanese agencies are not. What would be the commission margin of the agency? I bet something between 20 and 50%. Chances are, due to the distance between the agency and here in Tokyo that in case I would have received the job and quit in-between for some unexpected reasons, they would have been in trouble finding a back up in short time. A guild like loose organization of interpreters here would make so much sense that it is senseless it still does not exist.

So June will end up with a hole in there (in a hole there lived a Hobbit), although a few small plugs may compensate a little. Should I have reduced my fees knowing more or less about the medium market reality when dealing direct, knowing that the commission would make the offer unappealing? Should I have paid the agency by preempting the issue through voluntary regime? Where the client conscious of the role of the agency? No to everything. I know suggesting the client might be unaware that the agency's layer adds to the cost sounds a little off the board, but I would not be surprised the extend of awareness of that basic fact to be fuzzy in many cases.

Past conditional has never proved to be fruitful in anyway. Summer is hot and a time where the West, more than the East, goes on vacation mode. I only regret the part of attendance and true liaison work, besides basic interpretation, the job would have involved. That's where you try hard and fail to find a satisfactory ending phrase.