Still Waiting, Inc.

I'm still waiting for something in writing to tell me I have a new job. In the mean time, I STILL haven't given my two weeks notice at my current job and have been jumping through hoops for the temp agency I have to go through for a year.

The new job is supposed to start next Monday. At the rate things are moving, by the time I am finally able to give my notice, I won't be able to start until Christmas. At that point, I may as well wait until after the New Year to get the two paid holidays that week.

One of the hoops I had to jump through for the agency is that I had to become a corporation in order to work as an independent contractor to them. They seem to be a little unclear on the law. After they tried to tell me that it's because of IRS rules, I quoted the rules back to them and told them how they were wrong. They finally admitted it was actually a corporate policy. Don't try to use tax excuses against someone who gets paid to do taxes. I see a big class action lawsuit in their future. Not from me, but some disgruntled contractor with a lawyer. Maybe it'll be Mrs. Dirpus. She's getting ticked off enough by all of this to do something like that.

So now I'm a corporation. It was a little unsettling to see how easy it was to become one. I had done research on the process a few months ago. It seemed pretty straight forward, but appeared to take quite a while. HA! I filled out about five blanks on a one page form I got from the Secretary of State's website, turned that in with a $100 check and a $15 dollar counter fee at the appropriate counter in their building, and waited about twenty minutes for them to process the paperwork. Congratulations! I am now Dirpus, Inc. That's not my real corporate name. The agency paperwork was already done using another name. Maybe that'll be my next corporation, since it's so easy. No one out there better steal my nickname. You can have Chumley, Inc. I won't be incorporating that nickname.

What other hoops have I had to jump through? Hmmm.

I had to sign an independent contractor agreement. I got this six page contract with all kinds of lawyer speak that took a while to read. It's like the lawyers have their own language. After deciphering it all, I concluded that everything in that contract was written to protect the agency. I couldn't have that. I crossed out about half the text in the contract and replaced it with language to protect me. I signed it and sent it back. When I spoke to the agency, they were a little flabbergasted. They had never seen anything more than a one line change to that contract and didn't know what to do. They had to send it to their corporate headquarters to get their CFO to review the changes. It took about two days for them to say they had accepted all of my changes except one, and I didn't have to do anything for that one. It's amazing what happens when one has leverage. They need me to be available to start next Monday and I won't be available because they have been dragging their feet. So don't let anyone EVER tell you that you can't change a contract. You can change anything you want, especially if it's with a private company. My boss is now using my changes a starting point for HER new contract with these people. I think I started a trend. They aren't going to like me down there. As Mrs. Dirpus would say, "Too bad, so sad."

The kicker in all of this is that it started because my current company didn't have any work for my team when we lost the re-bid for our current contract. We were scrambling, writing proposals for other things, and looking at some part time and short term projects within our company. I got the verbal offer from the new company on a day I was making corrections to one of our proposals. We ended up winning that contract last week. Now it looks like I have one full time project and two part time projects in my current company, all starting next week. I'm even supposed to fly to the mother ship tomorrow to meet the current management and staff on the two part time projects. I would like to be able to give my notice so my friend, "rhymes with Buster Luck", could go instead. He's already on one of the part time projects and would like to do the other one, too. It seems wrong to act like I'm going to be around when I won't. But I REALLY don't want to quit this job until I am absolutely sure the next one is in place.

So, here I sit, still waiting. But at least I'm incorporated. Hey, if you need to clean some currency, we can probably work something out for a modest fee.

At least I have band practice on Thursday nights as a diversion. But, that's a different post.