FWD: Contracting where you used to work

["Mark L. Levinson" <nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il>]

> Has anyone had this experience of going back to work on contract 
> for a company where you were previously full-time? 

Sort of.  As soon as it laid me off, the company started 
negotiating with me to finish my current manuals as a 
freelancer.  I was back at the same desk after about a
week.  Obviously I had leverage regarding my fee because
no one else knew the project like I did.  And the company
had leverage because (this being only a couple of months ago)
they knew that in the current economy new employers wouldn't
be lining up the same day to grab me.  By the time we finished 
thumb-wrestling, I had a reasonable fee though it was on a 
project basis and I would have preferred hourly.

The biggest difference was that as an employee I'd been in the
middle of a long and bitter tangle during which my boss had 
been relaying messages that hq "can't print the manuals from 
PDF files, they want Microsoft Word files" and I kept saying 
"nonsense, all they want is the chance to screw around with 
the content," but as a freelancer I no longer felt the
obligation to save the company from itself by arguing about
the format of the deliverables.

My fellow workers treated me much the same, on the social
level at least.  Once or twice they asked for the sort of 
extra help that they were accustomed to getting from me 
as a fellow employee-- help on deliverables other than
the manuals-- and I said something like "it's not 
in my contract, but later if I have time" and they didn't
come back.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Mark L. Levinson - nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il - Herzlia, Israel
--------------------------------------------------------------
         Poetry:  http://www.mp3.com/MarkLLevinson
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