A good colleague of mine back from the days when I was doing contract work recently encountered a very common and downright outrageous situation. A last minute project was thrown at him, deliberately or not I’d never know, about 2 hours before he was scheduled to leave for the day. He started the project, but obviously could not complete the work given the nature, scope of work, and unrealistic timeframe they gave him to get it done. He notified hs superiors that he couldn’t get it done by the time they wanted and left when his 8 hours of work was up. Anyhow, the following day, his superiors and the managing director chewed him out because they “made a promise” to the developers it would get done that same day. He stated his case that he is not paid to work OT, and thus cannot stay past 5:00pm because he doesn’t work for free and is not their employee. They seem to have forgotten that he is a contractor and has no affiliation or obligation to work for more hours than he is being paid for. The superiors gave him the typical corporate song and dance BS about him not being a team player and such, which he laughed off and again reminded them that he is paid by the hour, not by the project. How does one get the point across to such hardheaded corporate clowns that such actions are considered a breach of contract on their part, because they treat contractors like employees and are bound to repeat their behavior? Is this a sign for him to flee from this madness and take his business elsewhere? Is there any legal recourse in any of this?