I’m a consultant. I was hired because I was willing to travel up to 50% of the year. When they told be last week Wednesday that this Monday I needed to be at the client, I said “Alright, I’m your man.” When they told me last Thursday that I instead, I was going to head down there the following Monday, and in the meantime, I was to learn a completely new and different software analysis tool, I said “Allllllllrighty, then…I can do that.” When they told me that the project was to last up to/through the end of the year (read: it’ll end sometime in February), I paused briefly and said “Okay, I can do that, too.” Mind you, when they told me about travel, they assured me it was alot of little trips. Right.
So, they’ve had an extra week to set things up, never mind that this project is actually what I was hired for back in September, but they’ve had this extra week to hammer out the details. You know, the big things like where I’ll be staying. Yesterday, I get an email asking for my address so they can send the keys to an apartment where I’ll be staying. I ask for directions and then bring up that I might be traveling to and from home on the weekends, could I maybe use a rental car? This morning, I’m told that they’d prefer I don’t use a rental, instead just charge the miles on my car at the normal rate (32.5 cents a mile). I’m about 7,000 miles form the end of my coverage for my warranty, it’s about 210 miles each way to the client. That means I’m gong to be putting 1,680 miles on my car, just to go home on the weekends! Never mind the normal daily travel. So I figure, fine, I’ll just get a rental on the weekends and hide the cost under “mileage” and work it out.
3:30 this afternoon, I’m told that I’ll not be staying at the apartment, but that they’ve decided it would be better for me to stay at a hotel. It seems when the project manager started looking into the cost of the rental car, it got him thinking. If I’m going to be going home every couple’ a weekends anyway, why not put me in a hotel, so that way I can check out and back in every weekend and save some money, and while we’re at it, why not make it a cheap hotel? The apartment came out to about $50 a day total, the hotel is $55 + taxes.
Sure, that might seem cheaper, but two things that will blow that right the fuck out of the water:
- food- with the apt. I could buy groceries and cook, which I like to do any way, and get by on $40-50 a week; with the hotel, I’m gonna be eating out every day, breakfast lunch and dinner, so figure, conservatively, $20-25 a day = $100-125 a week;
- I have two cats- I was going to bring them with me, figuring in the apartment, it’d be no problem; can’t have pets in a hotel, last time I checked. So now, since it’s last minute and all, I have to bust my ass to either find an extremely good friend, or…well, I don’t know. I’ll tell you this, I am not kenneling my cats for two+ months. Fuckin’ no way, buddy.
5:00, time to head home, right? Nope. I’m still sitting here waiting for a copy of the itinerary. I have no idea where the hotel is, or for that matter, which hotel!
A guy I graduated with has worked here for the last 4 years and he said this was sort of par for the course…WTF did I get myself into?
So I figured if there was ever a time for me to Pit something, this is it.