Thinking About… Work Style

Gordon made a comment recently that made me think a bit. Basically, he said that I still appear to have a “contract” view on things, and in a lot of ways I think that’s actually a pretty fair assessment.

I can’t deny, going back to being properly “employed” rather than self-employed has involved a lot of changes for me – some good, some bad. I find it very difficult to switch off the “business” side of my brain, the bit that looks at decisions and can see they’re bad, the bit that doesn’t understand those decisions or why they were made, the bit that makes me want to stand up and shout “For Fuck’s Sake!” in exasperation. Herself keeps on trying to train me in the mantra of “It’s not my problem” and “It’s not my business, it’s theirs, and they can do what they want with it”. It works, but only up to a point. And once that point is passed, I just don’t like seeing a business – whether mine or one that I’m involved in – going tits-up for no good reason. I can’t help it, it seems stupid, and I have little to no tolerance for stupidity.

However, on the plus side, being employed means I get fun stuff like sick pay, and holidays. I don’t have to be responsible for every little thing, for all the paperwork, legislation, hassle, finance, worry, and guff. But it does mean I have to deal with other people’s ideas of how a business should work, rather than my own. And at the moment being employed is part of the plan – it’s easier to get a mortgage when you’re in a “proper” job, rather than going through all the hoops and hurdles they put in for the self-employed : “We want six years of certified accounts” “But I’ve only been in business three years, and my turnover’s less than the Companies House figure that requires certified accounts, so I don’t have them certified” “Tough, we want six years certified accounts”. So it means I’ll most likely remain “employed” for at least this year, while we see what we’re doing, where we’re going, and all that gubbins.

Of course, when you’re self-employed you need to deal with people still, and their ideas of how their business should be run – and in most cases that’s fine, I can handle that because they’re doing it to their own business, not mine. And they’re paying me. And before anyone else says it, yes, I know that in effect that’s the same thing as being employed by someone. But for some reason, in my head it’s just not the same.

Would I want to go back to contracting, necessarily? No. Do I want to go back to being self-employed, and working on my own stuff, for my own business? Hell, yes.