Unemployment Chronicles: Last Day

My last day at my first contract job was actually last Friday, but this writing thing takes time, so I'm just writing about it now.  My contract came to an end as planned Friday, and I ended up working a very short, 2.25-hour day.  I started the day by writing a nice note to my client and offering to leave at noon, as I just did not have much to do, and I knew how difficult it would be to find something new for me to work on for just a few hours.  I had one little graphing problem to solve, and as it turned out, I solved it in an hour and a half.  At 10:00, the client looked at it, said it looked good, and asked if I had more to do.  I suggested that I could just clock out, and I was done.

I have to say, I think that having a last day is going to be one of the great benefits of contracting.  Most jobs are a never-ending set of overlapping tasks, some one-off, some repeating off into eternity.  You are never done.  You can never step back and say, "finished."  Even if you can say that about some aspect, there is always more on the table.  The contracting model is more like taking a college course -- you put in an effort, have some things to do, and then you're done.  Really really done, turn-in-your-badge done, never going back there done.

The way I have managed my career -- which means hardly ever looking for a job until I was disgusted with my current one -- I have never left a job on the greatest of terms.  That doesn't mean that I was banned from the premises everywhere I used to work, but there was always a bit of unhappiness in the end.  The worst case of that phenomenon was Farmers, where I had great success and worked for 11 years, but the last three years and the ending left a bad taste.  (In fact, there I am effectively if not actually banned from the building, as I would not feel it was appropriate to go back.)

By contrast, World Vision was pretty much a complete success.  The client was happy with me, the work got done, they offered to give me a reference.  Put that one in the books; you can't take it away.  I suppose that things could go south with Robert Half one day, but my first contract was a good one.  It must be part of my personality that I like to see closure.  Doesn't everyone?

One other aspect of contracting that appeals to my desire for feedback:  In most accounting positions, it is not easy to see the direct connection, if any, between your work and the profitability of the company.  I couldn't tell you how much more, or less, profitable Farmers was because I was there, or how that compared to anyone else.  The same is true for World Vision; however, for Robert Half, I can give you a pretty close estimate of how much money they made because of my work.  Some people who work there are paid on commission based partly on my earnings, so my work benefited them directly as well.  I like knowing that.

So one down, and on to the next one.  And that is a subject for another post.