One of the things that I inherited when I moved to the new contract was a contract employee whom we had engaged to provide services to our client. He hadn’t started and so I was left with the task of taking him on when he arrived at the contract
I’d had nothing to do with the interview process and I’d had nothing to do with the preparation of the actual contract either. That was all completed prior to my own arrival on site.
He was on a fly-in fly-out arrangement and from day one he started to give the impression that he was there to make money off us.
One of the first discussions that I had with him was that whilst we had him in a hotel where his meals were covered, I would like to move him to self-contained accommodation, figuring that he’d get sick of the restaurant food pretty quick. But no, he wanted to stay in the hotel.
Things really took a turn for the worse when he submitted his first invoice. He was working excessive hours, without having been through relevant approvals and had also booked the time that he spent flying back and forth and claimed all his taxis. Now the contract was silent on this matter but he claimed that it had all been verbally arranged with my predecessor.
Lucky for me, I’m on good terms with my predecessor and called him to confirm. He denied that this was in fact the case. Strike 1.
The next little bit of carry on was the chair. He claimed that due to having had an accident some time ago, he had a bad back and therefore needed a high-backed chair with arm rests for OH&S reasons. I wasn’t about to just go out and buy him a chair, especially when our client is moving premises soon and not taking any of the existing furniture with them. I suggested that I’d talk to someone about swapping chairs with him to avoid this.
The next day I came in to discover that after the person in question had gone home, he’d decided to help himself to the chair, before I’d even had a chance to talk to them about it. Needless to say the chance of a chair swap after that had plummeted in the probability stakes to chances equally those of one Mr Buckley.
It wasn’t long after that that we started to get complaints from the people that were working around him about thelow productivity and the amount of time that he was spending on the internet and making personal calls.
It was starting to piss off a lot of people that someone that had been brought in as a contractor, at expensive rates seemed to be getting away with all this crap whist they just sat down, heads down, bums up and got on with the work at hand
Then came the bit where he spoke to me about the food. He was sick of the restaurant food, was he allowed to eat anywhere else. I told him that if he kept receipts and presented them and stuck within the company’s guidelines, he’d be reimbursed (what a generous fool I was).
Having he outlined the dollar amount in line with the policy it was a matter of only 20 minutes or so before he came back and asked whether he could just get the money from petty-cash! Now generous fool I may be, but I do recognise a rort when I see one. I knew what would happen … take the money from petty cash, buy a $2.50 pie or something and pocket the rest. Not on my watch.
Of course, when he submitted his invoice the money worked out to just about exactly what it needed to to maximise the return to him each night. And to top it off, every receipt was from the same Indian Restaurant. And though there was an ABN on the receipt, it wasn’t clear where the restaurant was, so I had to hold off on investigations as to whether he was doing what I suspected (which was that he’d come to an arrangement to get a receipt from them to maximise his return regardless of whether or what he ate).
It was enough to tip things over the edge, so I arranged a review of his contract and cut off any food reimbursements. I changed him from the expensive hotel to a self contained apartment.
Then of course he had an issue with the fact that he’d been “far away” from work. So far as North Adelaide in fact. After telling me about the fact that he was going to have to swap the car that he had in Adelaide with the one that his wife had in his home state, he asked how he was going to get to work?
I told him that there was a very efficient bus service that ran into the city from there and that I’d even pay for his ticket. But he doesn’t catch buses, he doesn’t like them. So I mentioned that he’d just told me that he had a car in Adelaide ….
“Oh you must be forgetting that I said that …” he started. But I got him out of my office.
Then, following further reports that his performance was inadequate, we pulled him in and gave him a dressing down, telling him that unless things improved, we would have no choice but to terminate his contract.
I waited to se whether he would actually manage to do this. But the next little step was the one where I got an email from HR where he was asking about the out clause in his contract. The writing was certainly on the wall.
But drama being drama, it would have been too good to have just ended at that point. I received a complaint from the client for whom he was working. One of the other guys in his area reported that this contractor had offered to pay him to complete the work for which the contractor had been engaged!
No more straw on the camel please, this ones f&%^ed!!
So this morning we went down the path of terminating his contract. He claimed it was no surprise, denied that he’d offered to pay someone else to complete the work and accused us of failing to meet up to conditions that had been verbally agreed prior to taking on his contract (despite me telling him to his face that the person that he said had made the agreement with had no knowledge of it!)
There’s going to be a couple of legal issues to resolve around what he expects to be paid and what we’re prepared to pay that I have yet to resolve due to the fact that he was never going to agree with our position and that I wanted him out of the building.
I escorted him down to the ground floor and left him at the lift well. I thought that that would be the last I’d hear of him until he was back in Sydney and chasing the extra 7 days payment that he was saying we would have to cover to terminate him.
I myself had to get to the airport to board the plane that I am currently sitting on to get to Brisbane.
As I wandered down to the gate to await my plane to take off, my phone rang. It was one of the girls in the office.
Apparently this blood sucking, oxygen wasting, not fit for the sole of my boot vermin had fallen down some stairs and was in an ambulance on his way to hospital!
Now where I left him, there were two steps down to street level. I had the girls check whether there had been any report at the reception desk or via security as to whether someone had fallen. There were none, but it was indeed those steps that he claims he managed to fall down.
Last report that I had just before boarding was that he’d gone back to the accommodation and that an ambulance had taken him from there, but that he had a suspected broken rib and wouldn’t be able to fly out on the plane that we’d booked him on this afternoon.
I’ll have to get an update when I arrive in Brisvegas...
And the kids that I’ve been so so very very fortunate as to sit next to on this bloody flight are a matter for an entirely different post!
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