A few years ago, I picked up a one day supposed tech job on a base near here. The guy was kind of vague but involved network printers.
Anyway I met the lead and finally found the building. My total involvement was helping the guy lift a very heavy MFP on to a desk and putting the other in a crate. Base IT was going to do the rest.
$100 for maybe 45 minutes or so IIRC.
The whole exercise made 0 sense to me. Why pay people to do stuff like this?
“Why pay people to do stuff like this?”
Oh,IknowIknowIknow!!!
Because he had the budget for your help. If he failed to use the budget he didn’t meet his spend goals.
Spend goals are absolutely ridiculous. (The concept.) The idea is that if you spent the money, at the time you said you would, then you are on schedule and on budget.
There are other possible reasons, also related to spending your budget so you get the same, or bigger, budget next time. The bigger your budget, the more important you are and the more pay you can demand. Also, there are perverse goals for which people get reviewed. Good review, good raise.
The entire budget and purchasing process used by the military and the government needs to be reviewed and changed to alter how people get rewarded. (Of course, it won’t happen because doing so would be something they’d do if they had to run at a profit. They don’t have to run at a profit as profit doesn’t make sense the way they are set up.)