What are some of the Worst Contracts You've Had and How Long Did you Stick it Out?

[northernladuk]

Probably a future episode of Jeremy kyle there

I don't think they let anyone from the Valley's in. Far too backwards even for that show.

[MrMarkyMark]

Reminds me of something a mate of mine had at one client. Not me honestly. My mate is a good looking young fella (Im a bit old!).

The PM was a middle aged lady. Borderline by all accounts. They were working late one night and she called him over and she was sat there with skirt hiked up and nothing else on underneath.

Mate made his excuses and left soon after.... Depends on your take but it could have been the best gig ever I guess.

Still at least you kept it on topic

How Long Did you Stick it Out?

[vetran]

Reminds me of something a mate of mine had at one client. Not me honestly. My mate is a good looking young fella (Im a bit old!).

The PM was a middle aged lady. Borderline by all accounts. They were working late one night and she called him over and she was sat there with skirt hiked up and nothing else on underneath.

Mate made his excuses and left soon after.... Depends on your take but it could have been the best gig ever I guess.

If he had to make excuses SOON AFTER hardly likely to be the best gig ever.

[alreadypacked]

Been on some bad projects in my consulting days.

Frankfurt 6 vendors, all with seperate config management tools. Spent 6 week looking out the window when a design change by one vendor and high defect with another, meant we could not roll forward or roll back. Never found a solution, PM had a heart attack and project was cancelled. Happy days, next project was worse.

Now I vet the projects as much as possible, and turn some down.

[stek]

Was anyone at Radbroke at the time of the legendary Tennis Court incident?

[NotAllThere]

Of course, the worst contractor I had was this Welsh chap. He used to park his vehicle just outside the company offices, We asked him to either respray it or at least park it somewhere else.

He'd often spend upwards of 20 minutes in the gents with a Littlewoods magazine, making grunting noises.
If I had a meeting on another site, he'd arrange one for himself as well. I think he was stalking me.
He had a tendency to long liquid lunches, so we had to insist he eat only in the on-site canteen. His colleagues kepts tabs on his movements- they were running a book with a weekly small prize to whoever could guess, to the nearest hour, how long he'd actually be at his desk.

In the end he just quit and did what he always boasted he'd do. He went on JSA.

[northernladuk]

If he had to make excuses SOON AFTER hardly likely to be the best gig ever.

Indeed. Some random woman flashing her welly tops at me would be enough for me to jack in a decent gig.

[Whorty]

Git one gig. Contract was very tight and was specifically to PM Cognos Controller and TM1 implementation from initiation to handover to BAU. Got on site and after 3 weeks the programme manager gave me 3 other projects instead as the other PM they had was not up to those projects. She gave him my two projects as they were easier for him. I explained that my contract was very clear and that had the role been for the other 3 projects I wouldn't have applied. She said as a contractor I should accept whatever projects I was offered. I was on 4 weeks notice and I gave my notice there and then. Ironic thing is, the programme manager (and programme director) were all contractors and yet didn't seem to understand a contract!! You win some you lose some.

The project should have taken max 9 months. Met a TM1 developer recently who knew that project and it was a shambles. After 2 years they hadn't built a final solution and had to resort to bringing in IBM to save the project. Says it all really.

It's contractors like that who give the rest of us a bad name.

[OwlHoot]

Worst of my contracts was a commuting nightmare, a daily three hour drive each way across London to Brentwood in Essex and back. Sometimes took four hours or more when there were traffic incidents. Only kept it up for a month or two before luckily something else turned up and I could jack it in.

That aside, for medieval grimness of working conditions there was a three month stint at a well-known mobile phone manufacturing company near Crewe (unless there were any even more traumatically awful contracts that I've successfully blanked out, but that seems unlikely).

[shaunbhoy]

The PM was a middle aged lady. Borderline by all accounts. They were working late one night and she called him over and she was sat there with skirt hiked up and nothing else on underneath.

Yes, but "Borderline" what?