When contract jobs go bad..........

[OwlHoot]

One needs to make a distinction between co-workers and the work environment, because one can be bad when the other isn't.

For example, I got on very well with permies and staff at a small insurance company in Romford, and quite enjoyed the contract, despite a diabolical commute and primitive working conditions and infrastructure (software and hardware).

OTOH, I imagine one could be in a snazzy city office, with an easy commute and all mod cons, and be working with a bunch of utter tossers.

[NotAllThere]

Near Birmingham, contracted to a consultancy that didn't have any techy staff, but wanted the end-client (software house) to think they did. I was team lead of the developers. The project manager was a nutter - apparently had been the victim of a machete attack when he was doing some UN work in Africa - and there were rumours of him being quite violent. Certainly prone to MOOD SWINGS. Needed project updates all the time, and questioned every tiny change.

Most of the business facing people (who were mainly pretty decent) we'd needed to talk to during the development phase were out with the software house's customers, or on holiday. The consultancy had promised ridiculous timelines. And forgot to mention that I had a week's vacation two weeks into the project.

I was so grateful when Swiss stopped flying direct to Birmingham from Basel, and I had a really good reason to hand my two week notice in. The travel was terrible - earlier Monday, late Friday.

Took me eight weeks to get my final invoice paid by the consultancy.

Definitely a death march project. Quite fun really, as it didn't affect me negatively at a personal level, and I knew it was going to fail. It was rather like watching a car crash...

[thunderlizard]

like one giant chicken coup.

even though it's a lovely image, and definitely what this country needs.

[Glazza]

Energy company in Mansfield. Turned up first day to be told I'm not working for the chaps who interviewed me (good rapport) but for someone else. From the start this manager wanted me to fail because I had been foisted on him. Had to sit next to him but he gave no guidance. My role seemed to be re-assigned from BA to Strategic Solution Architect nothing like what was discussed at interview. He got his way, I left under 3 months by mutual consent, and probably bad-mouthed me to his superiors. It was a shame because the site looked okay and other contractors seemed comfortable. I just got caught up in a political situation with no result but the inevitable early exit.

[conned tractor]

Last contract, vehicle monitoring system, small company in the midlands. The people were great, the work was great, but had to sit at the board room table for lack of desks, which itself was squeezed into a spare office.

Not an elaborate board table, just a very basic but large table to hold important meetings. This also was no so much a problem, but it was the chairs. These chairs used to numb your backside in minutes and being an important part the team, i.e. one of three people designing the whole system, was pretty much in the spotlight and glued to my unbearable chair for most of the day. I don't know why they had bought these chairs, maybe to numb their customers at meetings, but they were awful.

It would take a matter of half an hour or so to numb your bum, and this would be followed by the cheek shuffle, 10 minutes a side and change for most of the day trying to escape the pain, quite literally. Then the attendance of trap 2, not in the normal skiving way, but in the attempt to relieve my aching arse for 10 minutes. I ended up with piles on my piles. But in true contractor fashion I stuck it out and saw the job finished.

[YASUKA]

I was working a German Investment Bank a few years back; and when my contract when bad between me and my demon manager.

I was backlisted from ever working from the German Investment Bank again by my demon manager.

So... No point applying for jobs with this IB, the HR department at DB filters out all bad ex-employees by DOB to prevent them ever taking future roles with the bank. This is despite I was in the right and my manager was a racist bully...

Rule number one: All IBs are not speaky clean especially German IB.

[DiscoStu]

Last contract, vehicle monitoring system, small company in the midlands. The people were great, the work was great, but had to sit at the board room table for lack of desks, which itself was squeezed into a spare office.

Not an elaborate board table, just a very basic but large table to hold important meetings. This also was no so much a problem, but it was the chairs. These chairs used to numb your backside in minutes and being an important part the team, i.e. one of three people designing the whole system, was pretty much in the spotlight and glued to my unbearable chair for most of the day. I don't know why they had bought these chairs, maybe to numb their customers at meetings, but they were awful.

It would take a matter of half an hour or so to numb your bum, and this would be followed by the cheek shuffle, 10 minutes a side and change for most of the day trying to escape the pain, quite literally. Then the attendance of trap 2, not in the normal skiving way, but in the attempt to relieve my aching arse for 10 minutes. I ended up with piles on my piles. But in true contractor fashion I stuck it out and saw the job finished.

Why didn't you take a cushion?

[conned tractor]

Why didn't you take a cushion?

Didn't want to make a fuss or look at bit daft being the only one carrying a cushion into work.

[Lumiere]

It would take a matter of half an hour or so to numb your bum, and this would be followed by the cheek shuffle, 10 minutes a side and change for most of the day trying to escape the pain, quite literally. Then the attendance of trap 2, not in the normal skiving way, but in the attempt to relieve my aching arse for 10 minutes. I ended up with piles on my piles. But in true contractor fashion I stuck it out and saw the job finished.

Was the rate really bad, a proper new chair from Tesco etc. must be around £50 ?

[conned tractor]

Was the rate really bad, a proper new chair from Tesco etc. must be around £50 ?

Again, didn't want to make a fuss, just get on with the job. The rate wasn't terrible for my area but not anything like the banking rates quoted on here.