The Path to Riches

Back on 4-June, I commented "I wish I could quit on Monday". Well, now I can quit on Monday.

I have two offers in writing, one for a contract and one for a regular job. They are close enough (compensation wise) that I could justify taking the regular job (even though it's still less actual cash than the contract less self-employment tax), but after reading through all the accompanying materials, it turns out that they do actually do pre-employment drug testing, though it's not mentioned in the offer letter. Since that was such a debacle for me at Broadwing (and while I was dealing with that I researched the whole process of pre-employment drug screening and it scared the hell out of me[1]), I decided I'm not doing it again. That made the choice easy.

The contract *is* more money and it's working for one of my old bosses at InternetMCI, so that's all good. Also, I am probably the sort of person who should be self-employed anyway. I *was* self-employed until I took the job at Cable & Wireless. Frankly, being someone else's employee didn't really work for me at C&W or at Broadwing anyway, so if my moral opposition to the stupidity that is drug testing causes me to choose self-employment, then so be it.

The path to being independently wealth very rarely involves being an employee anyway, and I'm not planning on working until I'm 67, in any case.

OK, I think I've justified that well enough for now. Stay tuned for complaints about the new job -- it's inevitable.

Here's to never dropping my pants for an employer again...for any reason.

[1]In short, it's fraught with inaccuracy and you have no recourse to a false positive result. Furthermore, I don't trust SmithKline to 1)not mix me up with someone else 2)not keep my results on file in perpetuity tied to my SS#. I do not trust employers to 1)do the expensive test if the first one trips on anything 2)not avail themselves of medical information available to them in a urine sample.