I came to work and was speaking with Ezra, one of the other consultants at this project, who was regaling me with his weekend and climbing adventures. It was pretty normal stuff until he said that the consulting company that he was body-shopped to wanted him to reduce his hours. He dutifully passed this information on to his employer.
It is a very weird construction that came about because the project client demanded a single invoice so all consultants working for this project had to be ultimately billed through a single company. I was going through a different agency to this consultancy so the client did have a single invoice at the end of the month.
I was curious if Ezra would have to reduce his hours only to learn a few days later that he might be leaving the project at the end of the following week. This actually was for personal reasons but it all came to a head because of the difficult working conditions. The difficult working conditions were mainly brought about by the long chain of companies involved in his contract.
The main consultancy and his company both insisted that the actual client was not to know that Ezra might be leaving. This seemed a bit unfair in my opinion to the client but Ezra was told that they would be informed in due time. Every few days he would send mail to his handlers in Austria to be told that everything is going ok. Finally, Ezra told his handlers that if he didn’t hear that the client had been informed by Friday morning, otherwise known as his last day, he would have to tell the client.
The next morning came without any word, so Ezra had a coffee with the project manager and explained the situation. Of course a few hours later he was told that the project didn’t want him to reduce his hours and that they hoped he would be staying with for a long long time. Ezra was a pretty easy touch and did remain until the end of his contract. Unfortunately some months earlier the client had forced him to change to a three month contract which was expiring in ten days.
So Ezra stayed for a little over a week and left anyway.