How I learned that a contract is not forever

Post-retirement employment looked good

When I retired in 1996, I didn’t even pause. I immediately started working for a smaller company in my industry. I was cautious and unsure of my ability to market my talents as a free agent so I looked for another job before I made the commitment to retire. I was unwilling  to retire without a secure position so I started looking and found a position. My last weeks on the job were happy because I could ignore any and all tasks that I didn’t like. I had been marginalized so much that there was nothing I could do to train a successor. I smiled a lot anticipating my new position. Looking back, I can see how my frustration and inexperience blinded me to issues that I should have recognized but without making the leap, ill-considered as it may have been, I could still be a bitter, negative man working for my old company.

Rose Colored Glasses

At my new company, I was working for a man who was recently retired from my old company. I did not know him but he had a good reputation and my old boss recommended me to him. He wanted a budget and finance guy. My skills were more specialized and he did not want those but it seemed that I would fill the bill. He gave me a two year contract. I had every confidence that we would both be happy with the arrangement.  Ah, those rose colored glasses.

I stepped right in

At first, it went well. There was a whole new organization to learn. Things were more primitive in a smaller company but I always enjoyed learning the details.  Over time frustration grew. My boss did not value problem solving when it wasn’t his idea. I attacked several tasks which cleaned up issues for other parts of the organization and brought them up to a higher level of professional competence. My boss did not like a independent operator.  I discovered that my boss was an anal-retentive control freak who really wanted a mindless budget geek to make his financial spreadsheets and nothing more. He thought my focus was not on his details and he was right.  I did what he wanted but I was no lapdog.

My boss was human

I discovered that to make him look good to his boss, contract employees had to work a strict work schedule with no flexibility. Where regular employees could take two hours off for personal reasons and then work them at another time, contract employees could not. I had to take time off without pay to attend my son’s football games. After two years of managing the company budget, coordinating the annual report, preparing the spreadsheets for my boss’s financial schemes and playing cheerleader for other staff having issues with the boss, I should have expected that I might need another career change. I did not.

Cut adrift

About one month before my contract expired, my boss lowered the boom. He was not going to renew my contract and he actually had the nerve to ask me to terminate early. I might be a sheep but this was too much. I held him to the contract and worked up to my last day. It was a small victory but an even bigger lesson on life and another baby step along the path to freedom. I was learning all the reasons why being an employee is limiting but still unsure about what to do next and how to take control.