Blast from the past

My wife is back in the workforce - uh oh.

To put it kindly, she has not had the best of luck when it comes to employers. What she's doing now is temporary work, on a 1099 independent contractor basis, for the accounting firm that was used by the dentist she last worked for. This seemed very safe: large professional office building, established accounting practice over 15 years old, two mature accountants. Even for her, this had to be a slam dunk decent assignment.

Her main job at this point is to do data entry of time the accountant spent with the client for billing purposes. The unusual thing is these hours are for Jan 2006: they've never completed the recording of their hours in their system. In fact, they first record the hours manually, and then type them into the computer later; she had to roll her eyes at that process. What had they been doing in the meantime for revenue? Hopefully they billed somebody somewhere along the line before now.

But it gets better. The computer software for recording the hours is a DOS program! How it even runs is a mystery under today's Windows: it must be over 15 years old. Obviously, this accounting practice is a little hesitant about technology. But entrusting the recording of your practice's billable hours to 15-year-old obsolete DOS software gives new meaning to technology-challenged.

I doubt this will do much for her resume credentials. But then, this is my wife's world of employment; what can you expect. At least no one is yelling or throwing fits, and they're paying her. The bar is not very high here.

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