Making A Commitment

(No, not that sort of commitment – chiff that!)

Anyway. Having been a contractor for [far too] many years now, I find I still really don’t understand the people who take on a contract that’ll involve a large commute, and then bitch about it, or try and change the pay/conditions of the contract because of that commute.  If/when I take on a commute, I know what kind of distance I’m going to be travelling in order to do it. I’ve usually checked out the drive/travel – at worst I’ve a pretty good idea of where I’ll be going, how I’ll do the travel, and what it’s likely to entail.

A current colleague is coming to the office daily from Essex, via the M25. It’s a 70 mile journey each-way, using the M25 and M1, and should take about 90 minutes. I’ve done longer journeys as a commute (both in mileage and travel time) and it’s roughly the same time/distance as I was doing from Suffolk to London a couple of years back. (That was actually a longer one because I then did about 45 mins on Tube travel as well)

At least once a week this colleague bitches about how bad his commute is, how troublesome, and what a nightmare the traffic is. I know he’s tried to get himself paid for travelling time, or reduce his working hours in order to level out the commute time.  So far, the company has resisted changing anything, because he knew (or should’ve known) what he was letting himself in for – and I really can’t blame them.

With a contract, if you sign up for it, you should see it out at the terms/rates you agreed. I always do. The only time that changes is if the company is crap, or the conditions are not what you were told at the time. If they’d promised to pay for accommodation or whatever, and then didn’t, that’s a reason to change terms/rates. If the job/place isn’t what was sold at interview, fair enough, change things. If the job is simply not quite what you’d expected, grin and bear it.

Contracts are finite things. I can handle pretty much any commute or working conditions for three or six months. If you can’t, you either a) shouldn’t be contracting, b) should figure out your locations and commutes better, or c) should learn to shut up and put up.