[rangerelf]

Why? Why do you say "it drove you up the wall"?

A contractor owes you exactly what's on the contract, usually a certain amount of work delivered; what she/he did outside of that is (or should be) of absolutely zero interest to you, unless it's some kind of corporate spying or other illegal or unethical behavior.

A full-time employee is usually working based on a certain number of hours, so they owe the company exactly those hours, no more no less; if during those hours they perform satisfactorily, again, anything they do outside those hours should hold zero interest to you.

Your coworkers are right: if they can successfully deliver results while juggling multiple jobs, why does that drive you up the wall?

[danw1979]

The problem is, they interview well and start off performing to expectations, but then _something_ happens and the agreed hours (which is basically how all “individual” IT contracts are negotiated and paid in the UK) are just not being worked, stuff doesn’t get delivered on agreed timescales, etc.