So here’s the deal with work:

I’m a contractor—my contract doesn’t have a specific “end” date, it just ends when they’re out of work for me.

I don’t work from my home, I go to their building where I have my own office (desk, computer, telephone, etc.) provided by them.

They pay me by the hour. It has been previously arranged that I’m expected to work about 20 hours a week, sometimes more if I’m on a particularly large or time-sensitive project.

My boss, Bill, has an office maybe 100 yards away from mine. So what I didn’t say the other day when I emailed him was that I had already been to his office FOUR times and he was never there.

He has a laptop that he takes with him everywhere, but it has been at his desk every time I’ve gone by (another 3 times yesterday), so I figured he was in the building but maybe at a meeting or something.

I finally asked his boss yesterday if he was around—nope, he was out for the morning at his kids’ Halloween parade (he has the cutest kids!). So no big deal, I just called it a short week and left.

Before I did, I sent him another email (the one from Wednesday was, by the way, never answered, but he did email me a few other trickling tasks). Yesterday’s was my weekly timesheet with a status report. Oh, and I “invited” him to a meeting on Wednesday so we could talk about future projects.

I really appreciate your comments below—but now that you know the set up, you can see that calling him wouldn’t get me any further than emailing him. So drat, but there it is. I especially like Jeff’s idea that I just propose my next task and get started.

Unfortunately, I can’t do that either because what I do is contract administration, and if there’s no customer contract in house that needs to be reviewed, revised, approved, whatever, I can’t just make them up. Bummer, huh?

I have already revised all of the company’s “boilerplate” agreements, created efficient contract database/information and separate filing systems, and written up a number of Internal Process documents (“Do this task in this manner”). Without his specific guidance or a customer contract, I really am out of stuff to do.

So today I’m heading down to my sister’s house for her 40th birthday (Yahoo!). We’re going to stick around for Halloween and I’ll go back to the office on Wednesday. Cross your fingers that there’s work for me then.

And thanks again for all your good thoughts.