Reply to: I walked out on 3rd week of 3 month contract

[SuperZ]

possible similar situation.
Did not turn up for a 15 day contract as i was offered something better.
Agency is huffing and puffing about legal action and have sent me an invoice for £500 admin and £75 per day x15 days loss of income, just deciding what to do about it.

Let us know what you decide and how the agency progresses it.
You should pay somethng as you have breached the contract. You could try negotiating on the amount however. The £75 a day includes them being available to you (advice etc) and them actually paying you, and factoring. Because you`re not going to be there, you won`t be using those services. It you want to be a PITA the could also say that there was a chance the agency might not of paid you anyway, a 15 day contract was never going to be that lucrative for them, and many agencies aren`t that far from going bust so you were taking additional risk but I`m sure they`ll go apesh** if you say this. As for £500 admin, they would have had to cover that cost themselves if you took the job. Call it £100 admin (just to be fair) and £35 a day. See it as a £625 cost you had to pay for that 6 monther .

[threaded]

The problem there is the support manager is over-riding the priorities to benefit the managers. That is tulipe management from a support manager. Senior managers are non-productive and most only have personal printers so they can do their eBaying in work time.

- If the support manager is disguising having insufficient staff by giving managers higher priority, there will never be sufficient staff.
- It is the poor support plebs that have to take the tulip off the staff when managers get given top priority.
- Neglecting new starters is devastating for morale. There is the risk they won't stay.

Branded is working for a useless manager, with bone-idle colleagues in an environement that does not even have respect for its new starters.

My first contract was like that. I stuck it for 6 months and, with hindsight, I should have done what Branded did: walked.

Nearly all organisations are like that to a greater or lesser extent. It is an artefact of a pyramidal organisational structure. You'll notice it much less in flatter organisations.

A very similar pattern in such organisations is where someone calls in sick and then the managers are having meetings discussing why that person has 'lost interest in the project'. I'm there, and it's like, err duh, they've only got a cold you fsckwits. But that is not how such organisations are managed. So you swallow your comments, and out-loud totally agree that their lack of motivation needs investigating.

In the example you get new starters in, immediately demoralise them, and it is then easier to instil the company culture, and the overall result is they are productive quicker. Army boot-camps are an extreme example of the technique.

The guy who goes sick, you call them in for a meeting when they get back and scare them into either not calling sick ever again or leaving the company. Whichever option improves the attendance record, and the managers score-sheet.

Like others say, there's reality and then there is organisational behaviour and the Dilbertesque management space-time continuum. Just be mercenary, as long as the time-sheet is signed, who cares? Next time be more careful to choose a job you want.

[TykeMerc]

Or, worse yet, "Help Fred in his next workshop by doing the writing on the whiteboard and taking the minutes for his project board meetings" and any PM would walk.

Not true...

I did exactly that for a fellow PM 2 weeks ago as he was clearly pushed for time and I was writing the closures for my 3 projects.

For that matter I wrote the framework for his project follow on actions report so that he just had to plug in the facts.

If there's useful work to be done and I've got the spare time it doesn't bother me to lend a hand.

[northernladuk]

Hmm. I'm definitely slacking. Going soft and all that. Spending too much effort in trying to empathise and explain someone else's reasoning behind their actions when they did something I have never done. Perhaps I should just call him an unprofessional c**t and leave it at that.

And as for brasi12345 not turning up at all - also a c**t. Although I kept out of that thread because everyone else said brasi12345 was right not to turn up because he/she had a 6 monther turn up afterwards.

So if I have got it right, the correct way to behave is line your pockets and whether or not one f**ks the client is immaterial.

No wonder I'm on the bench - I'm just not mercenary enough!

[BolshieBastard]

possible similar situation.
Did not turn up for a 15 day contract as i was offered something better.
Agency is huffing and puffing about legal action and have sent me an invoice for £500 admin and £75 per day x15 days loss of income, just deciding what to do about it.

Whoa! So they are actually carrying out their threat mentioned in the other thread!

You can expect more from them, probably their legal department just before christmas.

Agents have got pissed off at losing out on commission. They didnt used to make much of a fuss but times are harder now. Expect harsher treatment for anyone walking without backup.

[RichardCranium]

Gotta say Mr Cranium I have the utmost respect for all your posts

Hmm. I'm definitely slacking. Going soft and all that. Spending too much effort in trying to empathise and explain someone else's reasoning behind their actions when they did something I have never done. Perhaps I should just call him an unprofessional c**t and leave it at that.

And as for brasi12345 not turning up at all - also a c**t. Although I kept out of that thread because everyone else said brasi12345 was right not to turn up because he/she had a 6 monther turn up afterwards.

So if I have got it right, the correct way to behave is line your pockets and whether or not one f**ks the client is immaterial.

No wonder I'm on the bench - I'm just not mercenary enough!

[brasi12345]

similar situation

possible similar situation.
Did not turn up for a 15 day contract as i was offered something better.
Agency is huffing and puffing about legal action and have sent me an invoice for £500 admin and £75 per day x15 days loss of income, just deciding what to do about it.

[Kaflinkle]

I've been a 2nd liner for more years than I care to remember and I'll admit is a landfill, ie we get all the crap. But if you know that getting into it then it isn't a problem.

Personally I'm on a decent rate and at the end of the day, it's the money that keeps a roof over my head.

I beleive it's all about an individual's work ethic.

[northernladuk]

Gotta say Mr Cranium I have the utmost respect for all your posts... except that pile of c*ap.

If, when asked what you did, you have to say "Unpacked boxes and did nothing technical so learned nothing" it doesn't sound so great, especially if that is backed up by a reference saying the same.

Seriously.. Which idiot says that. They BS there way through the interview telling him what they were supposed to do and embelishing just like everyone does. You have lost touch on reality here. Yes your correct in theory but we are talking reality not theory.

And who bothers with a reference from an ex client nowadays? No one.. At best you get one from your agent you confirms you worked there and thats it.

where is the benefit in staying?

Bollox..

You walk on to the bench, no pay, poor prospects, worst time of year to find a new roll becuase there is no benefits to you in the job you in?

Thats just poor. All very good quoting all this theory and hypothetical situations but this is real life.

[stek]

I remember my first 'proper' contract, 1994, I was only there cos of headcount reductions, contractors didn't count as people and everyone I worked with resented me and basically gave me all the shîte jobs and I even remember one guy instructing me to make him a brew.

So I did it willingly, safe in the knowledge I was the highest paid teaboy in the UK at the time probably....

Anyway, I stuck at it, earned the respect of the people there and spent nearly five years there, started as desktop monkey, finished as VMS guru. Learned as I was abused!

Still miss VMS, best OS ever.....

[RichardCranium]

The point is that NOTHING is "beneath" a 2nd line support contractor.

Maybe the lack of standardised job descriptions in our industry is not helping.

At the two sites I worked at where I have been closely involved in support, customer-facing roles were senior to the back-room noddy jobs. That is, you had to do box-building & rebuilding, security marking, making up plus & leads, cleaning mouse balls and all those other crap activities before being allowed to be a call logger. Having progressed from call logger to being allowed to visit users and try to fix things face-to-face, one would look down upon the back-room stuff. Yes, still do it, but resent being made to do it all the time.

As a consequence, those doing the crappiest, mundanest, lowest job of all were treated with a bit of respect by the others, not contempt.

Different environments, different management policies, different experiences.

And you are only as good as your last gig. If, when asked what you did, you have to say "Unpacked boxes and did nothing technical so learned nothing" it doesn't sound so great, especially if that is backed up by a reference saying the same. I have always thought that part of the deal in the support roles being paid crap rates is that it is an opportunity to learn new technical skills at the ClientCo's expense. If there is no opportunity to learn as the job is just manual labour - where is the benefit in staying?



What I read in Branded's first post was "This gig is so tulip that it is not worth staying and I'll risk the consequences". It's one thing being a project manager on £500 / day and taking a load of unreasonable tulip because you are being paid for the responsibility of making something work. Being paid £13 an hour to take abuse from bone-idle ******* who expect to work without a lunch break is quite another.

[ruth11]

The point is that NOTHING is "beneath" a 2nd line support contractor. I mean, who else is going to do it? 1st line? I don't think so, they're too busy being tied to their chairs answering the phone, resetting passwords and logging calls. Think yourself lucky you actually get to stand up and move around the place meeting people!
There simply isn't anyone else to do the rubbish. 2nd line contractors are employed to do this - it's their whole purpose in being. The permies are going to throw you the cr@p because they all know you're being paid more than them. Get used to it or go permie where you get to give the cr@p to the contractor. But don't try 3rd line cos it sounds like you will drown with all the thinking you'll have to do and decisions you'll have to make on your own.

[wantacontract]

I wanted to say that!

Or, worse yet, "Help Fred in his next workshop by doing the writing on the whiteboard and taking the minutes for his project board meetings" and any PM would walk.

I agree with you, TL: while doing a job way below your job description is fine, doing tasks just below it is demeaning. For a PM, being expected to provide project support for someone else is offensive; for 2nd+ line support then being told to do non-diagnostic support or box-building is offensive.

you're right, that would annoy me...but I would still do it...Fred is obviously useless....

Just think of the money and if you save well enough, you can pay off your mortgage early!

[wantacontract]

The crucial difference is that you were both PMs benefitting from (a) the unboxing helping your project along at a critical time, and (b) the shop-floor-cred of briefly mucking in with the lads.

I bet that if somebody from a different part of the client had swung by your desk out of the blue and said "Oi mate, before you start on that Gantt chart I've got a job for you down at the warehouse" it would be a different story.

hahaha, good one....that made me chuckle....funnily enough, if I wasn't busy then I wouldn't mind warehouse work....

back to my roots as an engineer! or warehouse picker!

As long as it was just the once!

[GreenerGrass]

all through my lunch break (from 11am-3pm)

11am-3pm? Cushy, are you French or Spanish?