independent contractor??!!

Well, so much for my newfound "employment".

He wants me to be an independent contractor working for him. All fine and dandy, I thought, until I spoke to a few friends of mine who were contractors. The truth is revealed about what it really means to be an indy contractor...

He wants to set my hours, teach me how to do things his way, and train me. I am supposed to work for him indefinitely, and go out to his office to work. For all IRS/government purposes, that makes me an employee. But by making me a subcontractor, he gets to avoid lots of paperwork and save money, and screws me out of many things. Supposedly subcont'rs get paid more because of the fact that they have no sick leave, no paid vacation, no benefits, nothing... but I don't think I'd be getting paid enough.

All around, it just sounds like a shady deal to me. To be subcontracted, it is generally expected that I am really good at something and have my own tools, methods and knowledge so I can seek out work from others on a project basis. Ummm... no, there's lots of training involved for me, and I am essentially his secretary. I mean, the other employees are self imployed for good reason - they are landscape architects and engineers. And the fact that he bad-mouthed another applicant to me for 15 minutes is unprofessional - and that's pretty bad coming from me!

Now I'm sitting here trying to think of a graceful way to decline the job, so that he will have another story to tell the next applicant about how much I suck.