What are the biggest mistakes a contractor can make in a role...

[George Parr]

Sitting on the work phone all day talking to wife. Blatently not work related when all conversations are spoken in a foreign language. Longest call was four hours but only because he went out for lunch and it continued when he returned.

I worked with his wife.

[Sysman]

More....

Coming to work, with what looked like pond scum on their green mouldy jacket...

Telling everyone of their latest fight they had in the pub last night...

Being p1ssed before 9am most mornings...

Being totally unable to produce any piece of work on time...

AND probably the worse thing....

Being the last one to be kept on by the client when everyone else was canned because of lack of budget.... what were they thinking?????

Backhanders or free drinks or thought he'd be able to get them a better job in the future.

[orac]

photocopying your tackle

Photocopying your tackle.

[bogeyman]

these are a few that have seen the demise of previous contractor colleagues

acting like a permy with feet firmly under the boss's table
being constantly late
giving the whole office chicken pox
bringing fleas in to the office
stealing the patio furniture from outside client co office
moaning how bad the client co is to their customers
taking constant sickies always on a monday
watching streamed movies at desk with headphones on laughing loudly at the good bits
going on swinging networking sites on the client co laptop with the client co customer sat next to them
snorting peruvian marching powder in the office toilets
stealing code and process docs from client co
looking in the bin for peoples expenses to see how much theyre on
providing home contact information for every resource on the project to unscrupulous agents

spending too much time on forums......whoops

Disagree hugely about the being 'constantly late' bit. God. I practically built my career on that one.

Anyway. It puts the permies in their place. They know you can get away with it but they can't.

Long, boozy lunches, years ago (when the world was a kinder place), were also useful in stamping your authority. Ideally, one would lunch with one's boss, or even better, one's boss's boss, and some random salesman from IBM, EDS etc.

Nothing better than rolling back to the office at 4.30, reeking of fine cognac and cigars, to the hateful glares of your permie colleges, who have subsisted all this time on a cheese sandwich and a can of Dr Pepper.

Admittedly, very few gigs were that good, but one or two were

[Doggy Styles]

This wasn't me (sadly):

Getting caught shagging in the Chairman's private flat.

Was he a good sh*g?

[Alf W]

Attending a beer festival at the social club on a client's site, getting royally leathered, deciding that trying to drive the coach laid on to take people home was a good idea and crashing it on the site.

[BolshieBastard]

One member of my test team turned up last week reeking of marijuana and saying everyone should relax a bit. I chucked him out. He was crap anyway.

HAHAHA. He wasnt called rooker was he?

[Zippy]

Was he a good sh*g?

No

[BolshieBastard]

I heard about one lad who had his extension firmly in the bag but when he turned up on the last day of his current gig in a Roller they revoked it.

What the **** has it got to do with client co how or what we spend money on?

Would they rather their contractors turned up in a battered old ford escort?

[SuperZ]

Sitting on the work phone all day talking to wife. Blatently not work related when all conversations are spoken in a foreign language. Longest call was four hours but only because he went out for lunch and it continued when he returned.

Were they Nigerian? An observation I have made is that most Nigerians have two mobiles and spend a long time on them at work. Occassionally when I`ve asked about it, it`s usually met by "talking to my connections" .......or bit on the side.