Day Job

In case anyone is curious. I'm finally no longer an employee of the "day job". All that means is that I don't do a set number of hours and that my benefits will run out at the end of February. I should pause before continuing and talk about how I shamefully gamed the system. See the way it works is that you get benefits until the last day of the month you receive your last paycheck in. So knowing that the pay period of January 12th through the 25th would get paid out on the 1st of February I told my bosses that my last week would be the 12th through the 18th. The justification I used was that the 14th was a big deadline and that I would work through that. In reality as you can see I wanted to work one week in that pay period so that I could get paid for it on the 1st of February and therefore have benefits all the way to February. Yes, as I said I shamefully gamed the system, but it's not like I went out of my way to make a secret of it. I described my plan in great detail to the people in HR to make sure that it actually worked the way I thought it did. They shook their heads in resignation at my wickedness, but agreed that that was in fact how it would play out.

I don't feel too bad because basically I've bent over backwards to accommodate the "day job" so if I game the system a little bit, I don't feel any particular remorse. Of course just because it was my last day on salary didn't mean it was my last work for them. They didn't have (and still don't have) a replacement, so the wanted me to transition to a consultant. Well as you can imagine with no one to replace me and no one at the job who really knows what I do, I had a significantly advantageous position in my bargaining. I'm afraid that's when I committed my second somewhat shameful act and made them agree to fairly significant hourly fee. But overall it worked out. By the time my benefits lapse I'll have benefits at the new business, and meanwhile I'm making quite a bit of money as a consultant. Everyone's happy, at least I think everyone's happy, it's tough to tell...

I wouldn't go so far as to call it blackmail...