Other Clients from Hell

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>]

Scottie Lover <iluvscotties -at- mindspring -dot- com> wrote:

>Just in case I ever again find myself in this situation, what would you do 
>if you were a consultant specifically directed to do things you knew were totally 
>wrong? 

Answer: quit.

As a matter of fact, I've quit two jobs because I found the
company's ethics unacceptable. In both cases, I quit without any
other job lined up and without much in the way of savings in the
bank. 

It's not that I have a holier-than-thou attitude about ethics
(although some people probably say that I do). Rather, I quit
because the discomfort was too high. If I ignore that discomfort,
it has a way of coming out in other ways: irritability,
psychosomatic injuries, inreased sickness because of stress, and
so on. 

And, even if the discomfort doesn't have side-effects, no job and
no compensation is worth living with that discomfort.

That last statement may sound self-indulgent to people who like
the illusion of security in a full-time job. However, I've done
enough contracting to know that there's always another job, and,
in both cases, I was right. In one of the cases in which I quit
for ethical reasons, I was unemployed for 17 hours. In the other,
I was working again in two weeks.

-- 
Bruce Byfield, Outlaw Communications
Contributing Editor, Maximum Linux
bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com | Tel: 604.421.7189

"But for just one time, I would take a Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea,
Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage,
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea."
- Stan Rogers, "Northwest Passage"