October 22, 2004

Min and I went out to a late breakfast this morning at Leisure’s in Lakeville. We ran into one of her ex-co-workers and her old boss there so we ended up hanging out for a while.

We got home just in time to find out that my job in Albany was a scam and that Teksystems was making up the whole thing, it appears. I put in a call just before we left for lunch to find out when and where we would be meeting on Monday morning. Then they emailed to tell me that, supposedly, at the absolutely last second, and contrary to all of the job requirements leading up until now, the client decided that I couldn’t start for two more weeks. Uh-huh. That seems pretty likely. The story in the interview was that I would have to start soon enough to overlap with the guy going on sick leave so that he could train me before leaving and then that way there would be an overlap of service. Then later, after stalling for two months, they said that they were hiring me for a different position and that I wasn’t replacing anybody and that that was why I was needed to start as quickly as possible. Now, when I am about to leave to head on out there, the story changes to that I am replacing the guy going on sick leave but instead of needing overlap, they can’t allow overlap so I have to wait for him to leave. Yeah, right. All of this after the little stunt that they pulled with me “getting the job” offer on a Monday, then being called by someone else on Wednesday to tell me that I was “at the top of the list” and then being told that I had the job again. None of this adds up. I can’t figure out what the game is, but something isn’t right. It seems crazy that they are willing to lose all of this time and money playing these games. Both Teksystems and Bank of America have to know at this point that I will be disgruntled going into the whole affair and that nothing is going to make me happy if they ever get me in there. I even made a point of telling Teksystems that they burned their bridges and that, even if I took the position, I would be hunting for another, better position, and that I would just walk when I got it. Because in New York, we are all Free Will employees which means we can start work whenever we want and quit or be fired whenever we want (or they want.) Since they don’t want to have a contract with me (that would have protected me come Monday) then the only thing that they are relying on to get me to stay working or to give notice when I leave, is business ethics. And since they have dramatically violated those, I have no obligation to hold to them either. In fact, it is very much to my advantage to not tell them that I am leaving until the second that I leave because I will be pretty much training the entire time that I am there and they will not want me to return if I put in notice. So I won’t be doing that. Businesses today really just don’t think through how the way they treat their employees affects them. But they don’t care. No one is there to make money. No one there is directly accountable for anything. They could lose all kinds of money on me but everyone will be happy because the interviewing process for new hires is less stressful than actually doing work and that is all that they really care about. No accountability, no work ethic, no professional courtesy, nothing. Just a bunch of lazy jerks looking to make their lives easier.

So that didn’t make for a very happy day. We have been doing a lot of planning around that job. Moving isn’t a little thing. Luckily we had only invested time and not a lot of money into the job because these kind of things are often done to “break” consultants to make them work like slaves because all of their other options are exhausted after cancelling other work, money is invested in moving, hotels, travel, etc. So anyway, I spent the rest of the afternoon attempting to contact every recruiter and headhunter that I knew. I am determined to have something better lined up quickly.

After that fiasco, we had to get ready to head on up to Avon to see Tony’s play, Blithe Spirit. It is his first lead and tonight is the second night of the show but the first night with Tony as the lead. It is a small cast show so they have two casts and alternating nights. That is pretty rough considering that the attendance for this type of show these days is pretty weak everywhere and Avon has an exceptionally large theater so it seems really empty no matter what. So there wasn’t a huge crowd there. Plus tonight was the Friday night football game. The show was pretty good. It isn’t my favorite play but they did a really good job with it. It is a really hard play to do because it is really long and the few character that there are are on stage almost the entire time, especially Tony’s character. Which means almost three hours of continuous dialogue.

After the show, Tony, Andy, Min and I played two games of AoE2. I wasn’t going to play tonight but I wanted to do something to get my mind off of losing the job. I think that that was probably a good idea, it helped.

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