Broken Pawn: Out on the Streets Again

  When I was laid off in February from my previous job as a consultant that was hired out to different companies I was lucky in that I immediately hired myself out to the same company that I was hired out to by my old company and didn’t miss a day of work. The arrangement I had with the company was that I would be contracted out until the end of the year and possibly more. In addition, my old employer found themselves unable to support the software I maintained that interfaced with a government entity and hired me to continue maintaining the software on a part-time basis.

  I had never worked for myself full time before and I found that I am not the greatest guy to work for. I took eight days off all year which included three half days off to go to the dentist, two days I had previously committed to playing in the Twin Ports chess tournament, and four days visiting relatives in South Carolina and seeing Ben graduate in Idaho. I did take holidays and weekends off but that was only because the company I was working for was closed because I might have been greedy enough to work eight days a week if I could have. Even when I was ‘off’ I was still working at least a half hour a day checking the program I was supporting as part of my part time duties which included weekends and holidays.

  Long before I started contracting with the company it had been purchased by a bigger company based in Minnesota. I have been through having the company I was working for being bought by a bigger company twice before and I kind of knew the script. Slowly but surely the kind of jobs that are found in every company are eliminated in the company that has been bought. Then a lot of people at the company being bought find new jobs and aren’t replaced. This time around wasn’t any different. Naturally there is a push to move the computer systems over to the buying company which in my experience takes a lot longer than anyone expects and that was no different in this case either. I was expecting to be told that my contract would be ending at the end of September when the company officially changed names. That didn’t happen but I was told in November that none of the contractors’ deals were going to be extended at the end of the year.

  The way my supervisor told me the news I think he was expecting me to be upset which I wasn’t. We had an arrangement until the end of the year and they lived up to their end of the bargain. I was told that it would be understood if I got a new job and left early. To me that wasn’t an option since I also had made a commitment that I intended to live up to. I have been working pretty hard this year and also made a lot of money and I intend to take a few weeks off to relax. I haven’t had a week off with nothing to do since I moved to Iowa in 1994 and spent 6 weeks looking for a job.

  I have a number of projects I’m planning on tackling during my time off. Whether I’ll get to them or not is an entirely different question since I started getting calls from recruiters about jobs before I let my availability be known. One call came from a recruiter who was looking for an EDI programmer. He wrote to me with the job specs and I said I was interested so we set up a phone meeting. The recruiter’s first question was how excited was I about the job opportunity and his second was how much money I wanted since I told him my excitement at the job opportunity was going to be dependent on his much the job paid. The recruiter spent most of his time gauging how negotiable the salary number I gave him was. He first told me that I was at the high end of the clients range and would I be interested if the offer came in for a little less. I said maybe if the benefits were right and then he went a little lower and a little lower until I said that I wouldn’t be interested for that number. Having settled that we ended our conversation but the recruiter called me the next day. He wanted to talk to me right away so I called him back. The recruiter told me that he was worried I would just want to work for his client for a short time until I got a better job. I asked him if he had my resume and we both knew he did. I pointed out that I had worked 13 years at one place and 7 years at another and asked if he thought I had never had chances to move on from either job. This got the recruiter on the defensive and he said of course he knew all that which didn’t explain why he called in the first place. Maybe he was trying to see if I was desperate for a job so he could lower the offer but I’ll probably never know as I haven’t heard from him since.

  I had another call from a different recruiter a few days later. This person wanted me to submit me for a job at the State of Iowa. I sent him my resume and he said he submitted it and then wanted me to send the State of Iowa a form saying that his company was my representative. I sent the form in, the recruiter confirmed it, and I haven’t heard from him either.

  Both of these ‘opportunities’ were cold-calls from recruiters looking for low-hanging fruit which is how most of the recruiters I’ve ever worked with operate. If they can’t place someone in a day or so they lose interest and don’t follow up. They are generally pointless exercises that I don’t bother with but I went along with it because I figured I needed the experience dealing with these types again. In 1994 the job market was pretty tight and I was jumpy about getting a job but in 2018 there seems to be a lot of demand for programmers so it is just a matter of finding the right place to work and I can even be a bit choosy to start with, choosy meaning looking closer to Marshalltown than the 60 mile drive to Des Moines I’ve done for 19 of the past 23 years.

I got the title for this post from this song by the inimitable band 'The Selecter' which was a favorite of mine almost 40 years ago when I DJ'd at a college radio station.