What's the opposite of moonlighting? Is it daylighting?

Many years ago - mabye 25, maybe more - before working from home was much of a thing, before we knew the word virtual - the lead techie at a little software company I worked at decided he was going to WFH. He would be so much more productive, we were assured, without the distractions of the office. The meetings, the interruptions, the little daily annoyances. He was tempermental. An eccentric genius. Of course it was okay for him to work from home.

And he was working from home.

Just not for our company.

As many of us came to suspect - and were proven correctomundo - he was spending most of his "work" day creating a new product for a new company that he was founding. A rival product to ours which, of course, turned out to be so much better, as he knew all our product flaws and was starting from scratch.

Anyway, once he finished his development work and secured funding, he quit. And took several of our key employees with him.

One big ugly mess.

We ended up suing and ended up with enough money to keep our shoestring operation going for a while. It didn't stop our rival's progress. They built a better product, had real funding rather than our lawsuit crumbs, and in general ate our lunch.

So this having two jobs is nothing new.

And what with working from home becoming the norm - or at least a norm - in many professions, it must be so damned tempting to moonlight. Or daylight. Or whatever we might want to call it.

I guess this was the case for a Providence school principal.

Michael Redmond took the job at E-Cubed Academy in July 2020 - peak pandemic time! - and then, for 4 months, kept on working virtually as the assistant principal at a middle school in Washington, DC.

According to a violation notice issued by the District of Columbia’s Board of Ethics and Government Accountability earlier this month, Redmond admitted to working on weekdays from 8:30 a.m. until 3:15 p.m. at Providence Public Schools while also working weekdays from 8:45 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. for D.C. Public Schools.

Redmond, who resigned from D.C. Public Schools on Nov. 30, 2020, earned approximately $41,000 in District government wages during those 17 weeks — an annual salary of $125,434 — on top of the $120,720 annual salary he was drawing as the principal of E-Cubed Academy.

...According to the notice, Redmond violated four counts of the District of Columbia’s Code of Conduct, including “receiving compensation for [outside] teaching activities during regular working hours, without using annual leave, compensatory leave, exempt time off, or leave without pay.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Nice works if you can get it.

Anyway, Redmond resigned from his Providence gig in April. No word on whether it's related to his double dipping or something else. 

It's not clear what the upshot of all this will end up being, but it could be pretty harsh:

Possible penalties for such a violation include thousands of dollars in fines or a year in prison.

...Redmond confirmed Monday that he worked the two jobs simultaneously and said he resigned from Kramer [the D.C. school] as soon as he learned that he was unable to hold both positions. He told The Washington Post that he worked around-the-clock to fulfill his responsibilities at Kramer, leading and attending professional development sessions and regularly meeting with parents and students. (Source: WaPo)

Maybe I'm just a scofflaw at heart, but I don't think this guy needs to spend a year in prison.  Especially since it sounds like he was actually quite devoted to his students and good at his job.

It just must have been so damned tempting.

Gotta imagine that, with all the working from home that's happening, Redmond's not the only one who's been juggling a couple of jobs.

Personally, I don't see how anyone does it. Not if we're talking about two full-time jobs being worked simultaneously.

One job is all-consuming enough. Who has the psychic energy for a second simultaneous job? It's like when you read about folks with multiple secret spouses, multiple secret families, multiple secret houses. How do people keep it all straight?

I could never have pulled it off. 

When I was more active in my freelance career, I was sometimes juggling as many as 10 projects with 10 different clients at the same time. And I have to say there were startup costs associated with moving from one project to the next. (If it's Tuesday morning, this must be conferencing technology. If it's Tuesday afternoon, maybe it's embedded systems.) And I never had to pretend I was working for a company. 

Still, I guess that more companies are going to have to figure it out. And if someone can actually do a good job for a couple of companies at once, why shouldn't they be rewarded for their productivity. As long as it's all above board and they get their job done. 

This, of course, raises the question of whether, if you can get your full-time job done with part-time hours, is it because you're such a paragon of productivity (rewards should accrue to you!) or because your job is underscoped (thus, you're getting away with murder).

Anyway, good luck to Michael Redmond.

As I said, I don't wish him jail and hope he can find his way out of this mess.

It must have been so damned tempting...