Called out Contract worker at work, wrong move on my part?

[Tonyafd]

A lot of people have made some pretty helpful remarks. This is the bottom line. You are being assigned 100+ hours of work a week. You have the luxury of being able to farm the work out to contract workers. Are you their supervisor? If they are paid by the hour, are they extending their work day by dragging out the work?

Talk to your boss. Casually mention to him/her that you can shorten the time expected to do the work. Don't push it. Their may be a consulting company kickback involved.

Another thing that you need to know is that consulting companies try to get as many people into your installation.

Last but not least; through IBM utilities like syncsort, special characters can be inserted into records so that the import function of EXCEL will recognize them and import them into their own columns.

[RosieSD]

OP, instead of paying by the hour, can you set a flat rate for your sub-contractors for the tasks you need done, and also establish goals for production?

That way, the onus is on the contractor to work quicker if they want a certain level of income coming in.

And, you can also more easily track your contractor performance against your goals.

The downside? It may be harder to find contractors if your ideas about how long tasks should take the average person is unrealistic.

[Mikala43]

It's your job to manage. If you see someone doing something inefficiently, either due to lack of knowledge or intention, your job is to instruct them on how you want it done, and the time frame in which you expect results.

If that does not work, you tell them their help is no longer needed and bring in a different worker.

[BobNJ1960]

Originally Posted by fishbrains

BigDGeek,

I understand your points, and I understand why you have chosen the passive path that you have. I am sorry that you went through these things.

That doesn’t make it right.

You mentioned that the two contractors in your anecdote did get fired. It seems that they did not have protection from above. Would they have been fired earlier if you had spoken up? Would the other woman who left still have her job? Would you have been less miserable?

It is a sad fact that women standing up for themselves often aren't believed, and sometimes no action takes place. However, other times it does. I can think of three people I have fired for inappropriate comments/harassment of women. I can think of a few others I probably should have fired, but was unable to do so because the women involved were unwilling to make a statement.

If people never make a stand and get rid of bad employees/contractors, they create bad workplaces. I believe that an active role is better than a passive role.

Corps make it a worse situation btw, by not publicly acknowledging to all employees the exact reason the harasser was fired.

[mash123]

Originally Posted by BigDGeek

That was me, and that sort of thing goes on all the time. People would be wise to tread carefully when it comes to that, particularly when most of your contractors come from the same sweatshop...oops, I mean "consulting firm", and especially when all the contractors plus whoever is supervising them all come from the same region of the same foreign country.


Just putting that out there. I tipped over someone's apple cart and lost my job over it.

Yes, those things happening. I saw it in one of my previous companies. There were 3 golden kids from certain minority and gender that could not be touched, as they were the "face of the company" in front of a liberal college we worked with.