Freelance

Work ground on. I put up with the silences, the plattitudes about working downstairs as I'd mentioned how I'd bounced down my staircase at home due to my left leg going a bit AWOL and there was a DDA-Compliant panic over me and a staircase. Not enough of a panic to address the out of date public liablity insurance (as clients do site-visit) proudly displayed in the staff toilet upstairs, but a panic none the less. And I'm sure the Disability Discrimination Act was duly complied with. Your honour.

So confronted with a frosty, patronising sandwich on the one hand or unemployment/acquiring a new job/career on the other I decided to look into my rights under the loathsome DDA. I had none. You have to be working for a firm for 12 months and then be declared a cripple to have any rights, from what I read, but I'd only been in for 9 or 10 months so hadn't (pardon the pun) got a leg to stand on. If I'm wrong, please correct me and point me to a lawyer!

Ultimately I chose to resign reasoning that were I the boss, I'd want to get rid of me as the DDA made having me aboard a monsterous liablity waiting to happen as I was employed as a developer but had acquired a disability that could and 60% likelyhood would (that figure again!) remove my ability to read again at some point in the future for a period of indeterminate length. I'd want rid of me. I get that. But I figured if I went then I could at least scrape a good reference as it would be acknowledged that I'd done the firm a favour.

But when I went to quit, on the back of an attack that had taken enough of my vision to put me off driving, they asked that I go freelance. I knew I wouldn't ever get any work from them as if things on my side were strained by the silent treatment to the point that I would go to law, they must've been justifiably pissed off with having a cripple on the PAYE books who couldn't reliably turn up to work for 9-5:30 mon to friday! It was a gentle let down all round, I thought and I walked immediately into a fat 3-4 month contract for a charitable endeavour that pays very nicely. And so to the future.

I now have a mortgage (eep!) and I really don't want to let the wife down so I'm on the hunt for work in February!!