While traveling, I received a request to return temporarily to the firm that had fired me to take care of some testing needs that had popped up. Rather than my standard rate, I would be returning at my contractor rate which is 50% higher so I was glad to be back. Even thought I was gone for two weeks a few things were different:

• 85 people had been laid off since I was last there, the hallways were a little less crowded. This trickled into other things like shorter cafeteria lines and a closer parking spot.
• The new blank space in the refrigerator allowed me to bring in a 2-liter iced tea container. Something I should have tried to do at least five years ago.
• The candy dishes were brimming and someone had even brought in a cake. Now that I was a contractor, part of me wanted to bake a cake to bring in and then bill for “off site work”.