This is one hell of a morning let me tell you...
First, blogger is still screwed up, and so are the haloscan comments.
Joy.
Second, as many of you know, I'm an independent security and information systems contractor. I'm currently on contract, and in May will be going on FTE; as one of three senior architects for the second largest organizational division of one of the largest financial intitutions in the world. There are a total of 18 architects at this level across the organization; and we report directly to a Senior VP, who reports to the CIO, who reports to the CEO.
All in all it's a pretty high level position; that I really enjoy even for all the corporate bullshit that goes with it, except for one problem: the company I contract to the financial institution through, are complete incompetents who have screwed up my life for the past 8 months.
Today is my direct deposit day. I am paid twice monthly, 10 days after the close of my previous pay period, on the 15th and last day of every month. My hours are calculated in full day increments only, five day work weeks, and I never have two work holidays in the same pay period except Christmas.
This means unless I take a day off (and I haven't in months), I have pay periods that may cover as few as 8 days of paid work, or as many as 12 days (as few as 20, as many as 23 days in a month... in fact this month actually).
Based on this rpedictable pay patterm, I have my bills setup on a twice monthly schedule for 3 days after my direct deposit for both pay periods.
So I'm waking up this morning, and Mel comes in and says "You better call and bitch someone out", she'd just looked at the bank account and my paycheck is over $3000 SHORT!!!!!!
What! The! Fuck?
It appears that I've only been paid for three or maybe four days (24 or 32 hours) out of a 9 day pay period (1 day short because of the day after christmas). Either that or all of a sudden the've decided to withold an extra $3,000 or so in taxes for no apparent reason. I'll know after the payrol adminsitrator calls me back.
Ok, so I've established before that my contracting company are complete fuckups who can't find their ass with both hands, but how do you take a 72 hours paycheck, the final pay period of the year, the pay period that people start paying off their christmas bills... AND FUCK IT UP THAT BAD?
Okay now normally this would be livable. We havent been living paycheck to paycheck for a few months now (after my gap in gigs from mid January til the end of May las year we were catching up for a few months). We have enough in the bank, combined with what I've been paid, and the fact that we've paid almost all the bills already, to get us through to next paycheck even after dealing with all the bills. Hell, normally we'd be jsut fine for a month without pay, except for the fact that it was jsut christmas, and we had to drop $7500 on a retainer for the custody case.
As it is, we had a gigantic legal payment jsut before christmas, then we had christmas, and now we have a $2500 payment thats due to our lawyer to maintain the retainer at a certain level.
Thankfully we called the lawyers office up and were able to defer the payment until my contracting agency fix their screwup; which won't be until next pay period.
Worse. I'm reasonably certain based on their past incompetence that because my next check will be so huge, that they are going to screw up my tax witholding yet again, and take out far more taxes than they should (as they have done on several checks this past year).
You want to know how bad it is?
Well, I've been with this contracting company 8 months now. I have predictable pay periods as I said, from between 8 and 12 workign days; and a standard pay period is 10 or 11 days. In the 15 pay periods that I've been with them, I haven't recieved the same amount of pay for the same amount of work twice; or in fact even within $30 dollars. Sometimes the discrepencies have been as large as $600. They also constantly screw up the number of hrous they aer paying me for. I file the same timesheets every 15 days, with a very clear total, that is ALWAYS DIVISIBLE BY 8; so how can they pay me for 75 hours?
I'm actually offended that this company grosses $45 an hour off me (the difference between what I'm paid, and what they charge my assignment), because they certainly don't do a damn thing for it. The only value they are adding is processing my taxes and witholding, running the invoices, and covering the "employers share" of payroll taxes.
The problem is that I can't terminate my contract with them, without giving up my position; and I'm on contract to hire going permanent on my assignment in a couple months so I can't do that. The company I'm actually working with has a policy that they can't rehire me for 18 months if I leave the contracting company.
AAAAARGH!!!!
UPDATE: Well, the company made good. I finally got the payroll adminsitrator on the phone; and she couldn't gfigure why things got screwed up, but for some reason I was only paid for 24 hours instead of 72. They cut a check last night and overnighted it to me; and it is now safe in the arms of my bank account.. where it will soon travel from to the arms of my lawyers bank account, but hey.
Oh and yes, they screwed up the withholding, but it was underwitheld nistead of overwithheld; because they calculated it based on the smaller number. Not that I mind anyway.
