Fifty, the Magic number.

In those last two weeks at Dowty I wrapped up the work I had been doing to pass on, in addition the coffee machine chat group had grown and quite a number of people were telling me that "they would be next" which sounded very familiar to me, shades of my previous ship jumping experience.

In another deja vu moment from the closing days of 1989, Pete Clark the contractor came to me and with a wry smile used exactly the same sarcastic line, the only thing different was the number he used.

"If you're going there on anything less than fifty bucks an hour then you're being ripped off!"

Pete had added ten bucks.

I was leaving Dowty in Ajax for Menasco in Oakville and my hourly rate was to be fourty-two bucks, so for a brief moment, the sarcasm worked on me, but fortunately this time his jibe left no lingering doubts in my mind.

Pete Clark and the rest of the contractors knew what the desired goal was, the magical fifty bucks an hour, but few were achieving that at the time, probably because the agencies were taking their cut of the bigger slice of pie, just like TDM had done with me back in 1990.

This time though, I was on a "direct" six month purchase order, which may have been perceived as a bad thing of not having an agency to "look after my interests" for the long term,  but in my mind all would be well and for the short term, fourty two bucks would be my going rate,

There was an assurance by new boss, Larry Abram, that with all the MRB work in the pipeline there would be plenty of overtime and although I would not reach that magical fifty dollar mark during normal hours, after the 44 hour point, my hourly rate would jump to sixty-three dollars.

A dollar and change per minute.