Mega-corp is short on engineers, so they come to our big boss and say "If you give us an engineer, we'll give you business." So I was offered up as the sacrifical lamb.

I do work for Mega-corp, as a representative of mega-corp and actually have a fair bit of influence in their decision making processes in some regards. (Obviously none at all in others).

So though I engineer in quite a few different diciplines, they utilize me almost exclusively in an arena that my company does not compete in. That is, Outside Plant Engineering. We're not an OSP contractor, so it prevents conflict of interest when I do their OSP engineering, then we get to install switches for them. And I do the same things that I do on the most recent project. I put together Engineering Design Plans, I build material lists, I talk to sub contractors, etc.

And they do give us business. Don't get me wrong. I'm responsible for generating 14% of my company's gross revenue through the business that they do use us on.

This particular project, however, is something that we do. If I may be immodest for a moment, it's something we do very well to boot. So we've had talks with them in the past that they need to give us work where we are qualified to do it. After all, I'm pure overhead to my company. I don't bill any hours, I go on business trips on behalf of Mega-Corp that my company pays for, etc. Not only that, but I have a pretty serious compensation package when you get right down to it. In short, I cost my company a bloody fortune to employ, there better be a return on our investment.

So the agreement is, when I do work for them, that we are able to do (and do right, there I go bragging again) they aren't supposed to shop us. We're supposed to be their partner for things like this.

So I can't really charge them a consulting fee, I was acting as their agent. But they're damn sure not supposed to be going to other subs and getting prices. We either win together, or we lose together.

I had already heard from their head project manager (the only ethical person they have on their payroll, I like him a lot and travel with him frequently) that sleazy VP of sales had already said "Well, once we get $tk's pricing, we have a month to shop it around." At which point project manager-man blew up and told him hell no. VP supposedly backed down at that point. It would seem, however, with the two of us out of town, he's going to do it anyway.

Like I said, sometimes I think they forget I have access to their network. The proposal was sitting in all it's glory in a folder that I drive map to everytime I connect my VPN.

If they go with someone else, I'm going to the boss and asking to be removed from this customer. I don't need this kind of crap, and even more importantly, I can't stand to see my company get screwed. We're a small group of stand-up people. Ethics are preached from the top down every day. That's a big part of the reason I accepted the job. This stuff is utter bull-s4!