Title is the exasperated utterance from a shady recruiter who called back a few minutes after I’d told him that, no, I wouldn’t be working for him, or his shady client.
Let’s recap the timeline.
Monday I got a call from a recruiter about a position not terribly far from me.
I told him, we’ll call him “Recruiter A,” my two requirements:
- I am not doing the contract-to-hire (or not) thing anymore, and;
- I am finished with work for the Federal Government that’s not on the General Schedule (so as a Federal employee)
I’ve told my current boss that my current role is the last one I will take in support of government as a civilian. Unless I’m laid off, I will. (And if I am laid off, I will see about returning to my last position, as I really loved that organization….)
I listened to his spiel on how that, no, this wasn’t a government gig, and it was in support of a commercial one who weren’t doing government work. (Given that the company is German, that I said, “spiel” is mildly amusing….) I finally got him off the phone after I told him I’d email him my CV when I got home.
I got home Tuesday night, and was a bit exhausted; travel takes a lot out of me these days.
Wednesday, I sent Recruiter A my latest Ops CV. Almost simultaneously, I got a phone call from someone I thought was Recruiter A (we’ll call him “Recruiter B”). The area code, and first digit of the numbers were exactly the same. The voices and accents were nearly identical.
I told him that I’d just sent him my CV. Recruiter B seemed surprised about this, and wanted to know information about my experience, which I thought I’d already given (to Recruiter A).
Recruiter B offered even less information on the position than Recruiter A, and was rather curt when I didn’t express the excitement he thought I ought to have.
We went talked about salary, the same discussion I’d had with Recruiter A on Monday. The salary range was unchanged from the discussion I’d had on Monday. The salary was less than I wanted, but still acceptable for something outside government. After going back-and-forth, I finally assented to him submitting my profile to the client.
About five minutes later, still fuming over his tone, I sent an email to Recruiter A, thinking he was the one I just got off the phone with, saying that, no, I didn’t want to move forward.
Recruiter A called me back in tears, saying that, no, he hadn’t just called me. Uh, so with whom did I just speak?
Regardless, I wasn’t interested anymore.
Thursday I got a call from Recruiter B. Uh, I thought I told you I wasn’t interested yesterday? I’m still not interested. I don’t care that you’ve already submitted me to your client; I won’t be working there.
THIS IS A UNPROFESSIONALISM!
So are you.
And I would never work for a company that hired you.
But my bigger message, aligning with what I wrote a few months ago, for so many things you can leave. I’m not playing this game anymore. Despite the newly-elected politicians’ desires to control me, I choose to be free.
I am not going to work for a company that doesn’t provide benefits. Even if Medicaid For All (yes, it’s Medicaid; some doctors will refuse to accept the artificially-low reimbursement rates, and will just choose to quit), I’m not doing this anymore. If you want to have full control of my time and effort, you’re going to give me paid time off, paid holidays, and a 401K match. No, I’m not going to do it temporarily. I refuse.
I do kind of feel like I should call and apologize to the guy I made cry. Maybe I will.
Update: I did call,a nd said pretty much what I said here.
I am not going to do this anymore.
