Hurry Up and Wait
February 28, 2005 -- evening
It seems the same with any big contract I get. Can you be here on this date – we need to get started quickly. Then you deal with some government regulations.
In the BVI you need a work permit. This requires passport pictures, medical exam, paperwork, Department of Labor approval, payment of a bond, Department of Immigration approval, and then you have to leave the country and return so you Passport has the right kind of stamp. At every stop you take a number and wait. Sometimes the wait exceeds the workday and you have to return the next day and start over. Hours waiting. Hours paid for by the client. Work not being done.
Can you be in Baton Rouge by 2:00 pm on Monday? I fly to Dallas Sunday night. DFW is backed up; we wait to land. Once on the ground, the shuttle bus to the hotel is backed up. I wait. It is after midnight. I loose sleep. The client pays. Work not being done.
Up to catch the 7:10 am shuttle to the airport. The plane leaves at 8:45 am and arrives a little after 10:00. The luggage arrives and mine is not on the belt. I wait in line at the luggage office. 11:00 am and I have my luggage. A problem with the rental car and time spent to get a different one. I arrive at the Disaster Field Office by noon, run through the paper work and then off to another building submit paperwork for a background check and wait to get fingerprinted. They say it could be 2 or 3 hours -- over five and a half hours pass before they call my name. It is too late to report to the field office today. The hotel is an hour away. They want me to report to the field office between 7:30 and 8:00 the next morning. Not a lot of sleep. And the client pays for me to wait.
For the next few days, I will be learning while I wait for the background check to be completed. I can’t be assigned and do the real work until that is complete. I am required to call in twice a day to see if it is complete. In the meantime we wait and the client pays.
But once it starts, here or in the BVI or wherever the work consumes the time. The days are long (I will have much less time for writing). The client pays and typically gets more than they pay for. In the long run it balances out – at least the work dimension does.
It seems the same with any big contract I get. Can you be here on this date – we need to get started quickly. Then you deal with some government regulations.
In the BVI you need a work permit. This requires passport pictures, medical exam, paperwork, Department of Labor approval, payment of a bond, Department of Immigration approval, and then you have to leave the country and return so you Passport has the right kind of stamp. At every stop you take a number and wait. Sometimes the wait exceeds the workday and you have to return the next day and start over. Hours waiting. Hours paid for by the client. Work not being done.
Can you be in Baton Rouge by 2:00 pm on Monday? I fly to Dallas Sunday night. DFW is backed up; we wait to land. Once on the ground, the shuttle bus to the hotel is backed up. I wait. It is after midnight. I loose sleep. The client pays. Work not being done.
Up to catch the 7:10 am shuttle to the airport. The plane leaves at 8:45 am and arrives a little after 10:00. The luggage arrives and mine is not on the belt. I wait in line at the luggage office. 11:00 am and I have my luggage. A problem with the rental car and time spent to get a different one. I arrive at the Disaster Field Office by noon, run through the paper work and then off to another building submit paperwork for a background check and wait to get fingerprinted. They say it could be 2 or 3 hours -- over five and a half hours pass before they call my name. It is too late to report to the field office today. The hotel is an hour away. They want me to report to the field office between 7:30 and 8:00 the next morning. Not a lot of sleep. And the client pays for me to wait.
For the next few days, I will be learning while I wait for the background check to be completed. I can’t be assigned and do the real work until that is complete. I am required to call in twice a day to see if it is complete. In the meantime we wait and the client pays.
But once it starts, here or in the BVI or wherever the work consumes the time. The days are long (I will have much less time for writing). The client pays and typically gets more than they pay for. In the long run it balances out – at least the work dimension does.
posted by J Corlss at 9:30 PM
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