Workin' It - Perspectives

It’s been over 5 years since I had a permanent, full-time, benefits+retirement+paid vacation job. 5 years. 1,500 days. I had one for a short time in 2008, but also had a few chances to make something bigger happen in my life, and thus happened the California misAdventures. Still, I wouldn’t trade those 14 months for anything in the world. However, I think a lot of folks may be taking what’s happened in the world, and how it missed them, for granted. And I’m hungry for it.

I want to take better care of my family. I work my ass off and want to be able to spend a full week at Christmas with my family and not fret over missing a week of pay. I want to give a company 50 hours a week, and a few on the weekend, and in return, bank a couple hundy for my retirement as a “thanks for last Saturday.” I’ll earn it.

As a contractor, I’ve busted my ass in large companies around the Puget Sound in order to keep working, maybe be brought on full-time, as well as gain experience. Not all companies work like that anymore. I haven’t had paid vacations, bonuses, nor the ability to really dump $ into my retirement accounts. This is what I’ve sacrificed in the face of “do not change. Change nothing. Don’t shake it up. Sit tight.” Financially it hasn’t been the best move. Sitting on the side of the “have not as much’es” (but still doing well), I miss out on money if I take days off work to go on a trip with the family. This is part of being a contract employee. My efforts go towards realizing the goals of the organizations I work in. I receive money for that. That’s all. It’s fact, not jealousy. And a lot of people I see who haven’t changed a thing in their careers have missed the point: If you’re not growing, you’re wilting.

In the meantime, I have scooped up experiences most folks have missed out on completely while their salary adjusted 3% up, and they complained. And they received a company-wide performance bonus, and complained it wasn’t as large as last year’s. I pay out of pocket for health benefits, and it doesn’t cover everything, which still matters around tax time. Full timers had to pay another $5 on the co-pay, and complained about getting screwed. Stress is a killer, ma’am. Take it easy. What a hard life you’re pushing through so valiantly. I know this is true, because I’ve heard it all. I’ve heard the complaints, the whining, the “can you believe what they’re doing to us?” whispered at the machine pumping out free lattes.

Don’t take these things for granted. These are perks, not rights. We’re not entitled to any of it. It’s a bonus, a hug, a little extra tongue on the second date. Have you really earned it? Did you create the iPad? Did you find the secret to no-burn cookies? Have you found a way to introduce demographically-targeted birth control so that the affluent neighborhoods are producing more children? No... You haven’t. Remember that the next time you are watching “Rio” from your back as your teeth go 2 shades whiter.

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MC, HOST, CORPORATE, COMEDY, SEATTLE, GEOFF, LOTT

I'm Over Contract Work, Thanks

I have been working on-contract since 2006, when Cingular bought AT&T and handed me over to a boss who was "passionate about delivering quality metrics." I had no upward mobility in that organization, and was so angry about the jackload who was managing me at the time being allowed to manage at all that I took off. I said "Later days, better lays" and went the contract route. It's been good and bad and not great ever since then. Sometimes it's been a clusterfist. It has all been about making money, and that's not always a good thing. When you're making money, more than some folks you work with, you can still be on the shit-end of the butt-wiping stick.
Here "why" is.

Apropos of nothing, I can NOT get a good cup of coffee today. It's thrown my day off-center. Usually I get 2 cups of coffee in over the day, with 2 cups of green tea in there, but ride my ears if I find a decent cup in this dump. MultiBILLION dollar comp'ny, zip-point shit for coffoise. BALLS.

Contract work allows one the freedom to move from company to company as soon as you screw up a project. If you're good at what you do, like I am with building requirements, determining requirement-design gaps, project management, business intelligence, interviewing, and redirecting fart-blame, your contract runs out close to the time you achieve Full Immersion and Momentum! on a project. Kinda like being in the act of coitus and the interruptus happens right about the time you realize you're setting some new stamina record, but OH HERE COMES THE FANTASY SYRUP and then BLAP...
you're cleaning out your desk with a loin-heat unlike any you've ever felt, and you're out of work again.

But if you're under 30, unmarried (or financially secure with your partner's money), and without children, Contracting is a great way to build a resumé. Otherwise you wanna get in a place and put down roots. Here's why:

Contractors are treated like rent-a-Cops at concerts. Necessary, sure. Doing a job some folks could not do, or are just too busy for. You are good enough to work AT, but not FOR, that company. Don't forget that.
Contractors get scraps. If your company has an all-day off-site meeting with guest speaker Alfonso Ribeiro, that's EMPLOYEES ONLY, mmkay? So you sit tight and finish working while the Employees go nuts watching The Carlton Dance up-close.
Benefits aren't great. 3rd-tier health care. Little/no retirement investing. You're on your own to drop $ into a Roth IRA or 401k, and don't expect the consulting company you're with to match it.

So I am 100% thankful for, but now totally over, my Contracting experience. I am actively pursuing full-time, in-house positions with a number of companies, but I think a lot of it is going to be contacting my friends at these places. Which I'm happy to do. I interview a lot so I'm comfortable widdit. I just hope the coffee doesn't taste like trucker underwear.

Not that I have perspective.
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Customer Disservice - Coffee Maker

Inez isn’t really into her job anymore. She’s in her 60s, wears a contracted company’s pre-approved, mandatory outfit on a daily basis, and like anybody with a badge around her neck that doesn’t legally back her use of a pepper spray/taser/attack dog/firearm/mustache… well, she’s just killing time until time kills her.

And it shows. For somebody who’s main responsibility is “stand at this register, push the buttons on this screen, and take money from people trying to pay for their spinach & oat-bran omelet,” it’s rare to see her there for an entire quarter hour. There’s a table to wipe in an unbusy café-seating area. Did anybody count Splenda today? What’s the respiration rate of the imported strawberries on the parfait bar, do we have a baseline on decomp? Inez’ll be on that stuff like mud on flaps, slaps on chaps, mustaches on your kicked asses.

God is good. God forbid that I HAVE TO WORK at Inez’s age. I hope to work at that age only out of desire to be out of the house and supplement my royalties from my forthcoming cookbook, “Eating Indoors; Eating Healthy When You’re Shit-Freaked About A Crumbling Society.” Pretty much every time I want to get through a line, I avoid Inez’s line. Sometimes there’s no other way, she’s the only one running reg at that point and there’s no “honor system” for dropping a dollar in a bucket for a cuppa.

Case in pants: This morning I was one of three people in the café selection area, among imported pastries (Safeway, I think), yogurt buffet, and coffee bar. Ah, that’s where I wanted to get to. I went half-caf, half-Bold. One of the carafes was making like a VP and empty inside, so I went to the backup carafe for the Bold, a freshly-brewed silo of hot, dark, capillary-tightening coffee. Gimme. Well, Inez saw me go to the backup carafe as I walked away from topping off my cup. Another person headed for Inez’s register as Inez FOCUSED INTENTLY ON THE EMPTY CARAFE CRISIS OF BUILDING 4, and, passing myself and yet another person (3 now)… walked at a very relaxed pace to the coffee area 20 feet from her register.

Inez strolled into action and took the empty carafe off its foundation, replacing it with the fresh one. Then she grabbed the two full, used coffee filters and the empty carafe and headed off to the back-stage area of the café. She turned her head in time to see three of us waiting at her register for her. Realizing that people were waiting, she did the right thing immediately, by saying “I’ll be right back.” Maybe she thought we were all salaried. HA HAAA! I’m not good enough to draw a salary. Just a gross payment by an external contracting company from which I must pay taxes. So I waited, on the clock, for Inez to be right back.

I watched as she returned with a fresh carafe and two fresh filters for the coffee-making, which was welcomed by the loud exhale of the woman waiting to pay for her three bacon, two egg, one toast breakfast, and another fellow with a hard-boiled egg, cottage cheese, and a donut. And me. With my one dollar of coffee. Now in line for 3 minutes. Another person awaited a breakfast burrito.

Inez’s triumphant refresh of the coffee brewing and serving station and shuffling return to her register earned her a purse-lipped smile, a sigh, and this, from me; “What happened with the coffee?”

Inez: “Oh, it was out.”

Me: “All of it?”

Inez: “No, the one in the middle.”

Me: (playing dumb) “But the other one had coffee in it and there was a back-up carafe ready to go?”

Inez: (sighing) “Uh, yes. I had to get stuff for the other coffee to make it.”

Me: (pause) “That’s lucky. Oh, okay. I didn’t know you had to make more coffee right away. I thought you were just ignoring us. Here ya go.”

Gave her my dollar and left Café Ambivalence and their English-as-first-mumbling employees (Latinos to the kitchen!) to sigh their way into a layoff.

I thought I’d just go to the automated coffee vendor, but it’s so inattentive and cold. And more importantly, there’s nothing to complain about there. I expect crap, and it never falls short. By my calculations, Inez’s coffee move cost the company about $25 in pay to waiting employees. Each carafe holds $30 worth of coffee if they bottom it out. So I waited on Inez to make her facility another $5 until she waited on me.

Jeez, what a waste of resources, huh?

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Workin' It: Good Intentions vs. Good Traffic

There are days, as a new dad, that getting out of bed before 6:45 anti-Meridian is as likely as Barack Obama second-guessing himself. But today I was DETERMINED to do so. Getting a good start on the day is vital to getting the F outta work early.

So I got up and got moving. With only the most-minor lollygagging, I was outta the house by about 7:45 so that I could get to work at a decent hour, so that I could walk the 1/4-mile from the off-site, across-street, near-campus parking afforded to me, the lowly contractor.

Normally I'll leave the house around 8:10-8:20 and, with but a few red light waits (great name for a bearded indie band NOW NOW NOW) I zip to work and arrive by 8:45. Today, ha HA!, I left around 7:50. There was a back-up to the on-ramp, through 2 lights, stretching nearly 1.5miles. I thought it was just a small backer at the crosswalk as some Immigrant youth made their way to the public transit stop so as to ride to their "America Today!" classes. NOPE... Big stinkin' backup. So I said a long stream of expletives about debt and mortgages and sleep deprivation and the entitlement of youth and people who buy Aplets & Cotlets and why can't I install a new version of an internet browser at work instead of the shit-pile that is IE6 which does NOT have tabbed browsing??? NO, it does NOT have it unless you bang-in the MSN Toolbar which I cannot do, as I'm lacking admin privileges on this machine. Otherwise I'd be elbows-deep in iTunes. Pssssh!

The huge back-up to the on-ramp ellicited a new circuitous route to 405-North.

Long-story short, when it comes to your morning commute, there are 2 things you must keep in mind.
FIRST, are you leaving the house at a time when you are accustomed-to, even if it gets you into the office a bit later, but absolves you of jams longer than Phish unspooling at Bonnaroo?
SECOND, are you knocking out your debt so that this morning commute will soon be a thing of the past and you can take that drive leisurely in the near future, driving in the carpool lane with your giant middle finger raised to the Rat Racers?

Had I not left for Los Angeles a few years ago we'd likely not be in a position where I'd have to go do this work or take this trip. But Life is funny the way bee stings are tingly. You gotta go and do a few different things to really remind yourself of why you gotta stay the F outta debt.

To paraphrase Thoreau, "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, thy traffic maps be damned." What an asshole. Probably telecommuted.



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