Am I wrong in my annoyance and disgust with corporate mentality in their treating hourly consultants and contractors as salaried employees? As consultants, every hour onsite is billable and any support outside of normal business hours is also billable. I am angered and downright insulted when I see contractors being called at 1:00am for support, bill the client for it, and then the client balks and refuses to pay. Note to corporate beancounters and idiots in HR: Consultants and contractors are NOT employees, and get paid by the hour. If you wake them up at 3:00am for a problem that they don’t fix until 7:00am, expect to get billed for 44 hours worth of work. When I was working as an independent contractor, I made it pretty loud and clear that if I don’t get paid for performing afterhours work, I will cease to show up altogether and resort to outside collection methods if they think I work for free. Is it just me, or have any of you been through such stupidity as well? Also, I bet these are the same companies that combine what should be 4 positions into one and offer the salary of one position. Cheap bastards!