Last week I learned that my contract would end on September 30. Yesterday, with only ten billable days to go, the office was shut down because of fire damage; when I got home, the phone was blinking because a contracting firm had called to see whether I was available. Life is good.
Well, not that good. They wanted someone who could start Monday for a two-days-a-week job. I’m all for working fewer hours, but not that many fewer.
I’m looking forward to some down time. It’s not the work or the people…they’re both good…it’s the drive that has been sapping my energy these last couple of months. I have in the past finished up a contract one day and started a new one the next, but right now I need a little chill.
Looking back, it seems the process of finding a contract position starts like this: you find several prospects, and each prospect falls into one of several categories, although which category a specific prospect belongs to is not always immediately ascertainable.
The bulk of positions result from the panicked realization that the workload and deadline far exceed the company’s capacity. “Holy cow, we needed someone to start this three weeks ago!” These are recognizable within minutes of first contact with the client.
The non-position is the result of unfeasible projects. These prospects usually bring you through the interview stage, after which you learn that the company decided to either postpone or abandon the project. The panicked-realization project sometimes goes this route.
The half-price contract falls under the auspices of engineering in companies where the engineers in charge look upon professional writing as something that doesn’t involve much skill because it’s not engineering. (An example of this would be the Suburban Hausfrau’s “Old Company.”)
The future contract is the one that gets tangled up in HR or legal red tape for so long after the interview that you may no longer be available when the company is ready to move forward. If only these were easy to spot, I could take two weeks off between contracts every time.
Then there’s a super category that encompasses all of the above: the big-house prospects. The client contacts several contracting firms, large and small. Within hours, the job posting appears, with identical wording, on five job boards; two more within two days; two more within a week. You know they’re all offering different rates, so you respond to all of them and hope you can negotiate the highest rate possible with whomever contacts you. And your silent phone just stares at you.
2 comments:
Crap! Fire?? Eeek. Glad no one was hurt and just cubicle walls were lost.
Are you still there tomorrow, Monday or Tuesday? If so, can you escape for lunch one day or are they trying to squeeze every bit of work outta you that they can?
Thirteen peppers were too much to do on the stovetop…not even thinking about the cleanup!
Banana milkshakes. Chocolate banana milkshakes with Breyer’s vanilla ice cream. I love bananas, but the potassium gives me a big headache if I eat more than one a day :(
So funny. You don’t care for green peppers; I post about green peppers. I don’t do black beans; you post about black beans. I do, however, have epazote in my Aero Garden. I understand it’s essential for cooking black beans; besides the flavor, it’s a carminative (deals with gas).
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