As I’ve said before in this blog, I’ve been an IT contractor for a long time. I’ve worked in IT even longer as an employee and had employee’s work for me, when I had my own company in Glasgow. Today I discovered what I’m sure that many other people have found out, that there are always small minded petty people that you have to work with. These people will boast about the advantage that they can take from being a trusted employee (I use the term advantage in preference to other possibly more accurate adjectives), still as a contractor you have to suck it up and move on.

You might well ask why I’ve just got up on my high horse about this, well it’s because I’ve been the one snitched on! This is a problem for me as I’ve known this guy for 10 years, he’s revealed to me on many occasions where his perks lie. An an example, getting deliveries from abroad to the office to avoid HMRC import duty. I’m sure his web browsing history would make for some interesting reading, as would his actual hours worked if scrutinised.

The incident in question was about the time that I wasted last Saturday and I can understand his question, but what rankles is the way he asked the question. He actually escalated the question to senior management, effectively accusing me of fraudulently claiming money for working when I obviously wasn’t. Although he thought that I was wasting time, in actual fact I’d cleared with my boss if I was OK to go into the office to do some of my own work. Something that I’ve done many times in the past, you have to advise people that you will be on site for insurance and other safety reasons. However when I got into the office, I noticed that one of the other contractors was in. As he is generally very busy and often short of time and with it being a Saturday I decided that there may be a chance to ask him some questions about some of the work that I was doing. When I approached him for some help with some fairly tricky scripting issues, he told me that he was busy but would give me some time if I went to his desk. I managed to spend a very productive hour with the other contractor, even carrying on the discussion when we went for a quick bite of breakfast and a coffee.

As with all the previous times when I have gone into the office to do my own work, this was not entered in the time sheets. A question that was in fact asked of me, I could quite justifiably have claimed an hour or so for the time that I spent with the other contractor. Also the hour or so of work that was done implementing the changes that he had told me to try, something that I have to do sooner rather than later as I tend to have a short retention period when it comes to scripting techniques.

Still now that this person has shown the type of game that they play, you are a little more certain of the rules – or the lack of them. It’s really amazing how much of a bigot people can show themselves to be, I was told “it’s because of his Union days, he hates contractors”. Well maybe he dose hate contractors – I wonder how he feel’s about Gay, Lesbian or Transgendered people – Oh stupid me he’s already told me.