I started doing some work for these people but I realized that the work was way different than what they pitch and while it might be great for some, I just decided it was not worth 10 or 12 hours of my time based on the pay scale. I can make just as much money working during the day and not having to deal with weird personalities, AI and bridge calls
The person at the top of the US government says a secret bunker is needed for his security. So, it's not a secret and what exactly is the threat that exists to warrant the bumker?
With layered defenses in place a bunker is of little use with realistic real world threats. A bunker is the last place you want to be when a determined foe is after you. When you're the head of state and have to hide under your house and use that as the reason that you want to spend a billion dollars, flat out fallacy. The real issue here is there wasn't really any discussion previously to tear down a wing of the White House because everybody knew they needed a ballroom bigger than the original structure. It's strictly a vanity project with my life is at risk because I don't have a bunker as a reason after the fact.
There's no amount of bunker building that's going to protect the head of state against a determined enemy with today's weapons. The goal is to make the person disappear and hard to find versus being a gopher and believe your hidey-hole is going to protect you.
The crap that people are being fed is just beyond ridiculous and a hardened structure is a very minimal short-term stop before you get the hell out of Dodge. But understand that you better control absolutely everything so that getting out of Dodge is possible. This is something that's been understood for quite some time for those doing the planning but the brain trust that used to exist is pretty much missing today.
Look at what one company is doing. Not anything I want.
I think this is a great explanation of what happens to us everyday and you've got people posting here essentially say don't pay attention suck it up and go to work you'll make money. Really?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dbe-lAkthiX/?igsh=c2IycmR4dGR6cnE0
This just popped up a little bit ago and I'm like this is not even close to being reasonable. 2 hours? The ticket is posted for 2 hours... That assumes you find the right device and don't need help considering it could be anywhere in the store. Why do they even allow tickets like this?
This seems to wind certain people up but look at the work order and the compensation then take a look at the rest and explain how this is sustainable at what they offer and why they would actually do it at that rate.
And remember kids you're paying at least 10% in fees and waiting to get paid.
Remember there are people doing this. I believe this can't pass the test to be classified as subcontractor work. It's not me but someone does it and believes that they are a subcontractor.
ARE YOU REALLY A CONTRACTOR?
A Plain-Language Guide for Field Techs on Platforms Like Field Nation and WorkMarket
July 2026. This guide explains the law in everyday words. It is general information, not legal advice.
The whole issue comes down to one question that courts have asked for two hundred years:
A CONTRACTOR IS HIRED TO DELIVER A RESULT. AN EMPLOYEE IS TOLD HOW TO DO THE WORK.
Think about a roofer. You hire him to put a new roof on your house for a price you both agree on. How he does it is his business. He decides when to start each day, how to stage his crew, and what order to do things in. He can send his workers instead of coming himself. If he finishes fast, he keeps the extra profit. If you like his work, he hands you his card and now you're his customer. That's a real contractor. He runs a business.
Now think about a Field Nation tech on a typical ticket. He's handed a checklist he must follow step by step. The date and time are non-negotiable. He's told what to wear. He has to check in with a dispatcher and often does the whole job on a phone call while someone far away tells him what to touch. He is not allowed to send another qualified tech in his place -- the ticket says he won't get paid if he does. He is not allowed to hand the customer his card. He's not even allowed to tell other techs what he's being paid.
One of these people is running a business. The other one is being run.
Question 1: Could you send someone else qualified to do the job?
A real business can. If the contract says the work must be done by you personally, or you lose your pay -- that's a job, not a business deal.
Question 2: Can you do the work your own way?
A real business sells its skill and judgment. If you must follow their checklist step by step, on their schedule, in their dress code, while taking directions on their call -- they're not buying your expertise. They're buying your obedience.
Question 3: Can you turn this work into your own business?
A real business builds customers. If you're banned from ever working directly for the customer, banned from asking for referrals, and banned from discussing your rates -- you can never build anything. You'll always depend on them for the next ticket.
A genuine contractor answers YES to all three. Most platform techs answer NO to all three -- and the NO is written right into the work orders they sign.
There isn't one single law -- there are three main tests, and they matter in different situations. Here they are in plain words:
THE ABC TEST (the strictest -- used in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and in Illinois for unemployment benefits). The law starts by assuming you ARE an employee. The company has to prove all three of these to call you a contractor: (A) they don't control how you work -- on paper or in real life; (B) the work you do is not the company's main business; and (C) you have your own real, independent business doing this kind of work. If the company fails even ONE of the three, you're an employee. Period. It doesn't matter that you got a 1099 tax form. It doesn't matter what the contract calls you.
Notice part (B). Park Place Technologies is an IT hardware service company. A tech doing IT hardware service for Park Place's customers is doing Park Place's main business. In an ABC state, that alone can settle it.
THE FEDERAL "ECONOMIC REALITY" TEST. Federal wage law asks: are you truly in business for yourself, or do you depend on this company for work? Judges look at things like: who controls the work, whether you can earn more through your own business decisions, how long the relationship lasts, and whose business the work really belongs to. (Washington keeps changing the fine print of this test -- a new version was proposed in February 2026 -- but the basic question stays the same.)
THE IRS CONTROL TEST. The tax agency asks who has the RIGHT to control the details: your behavior on the job, your finances, and the overall relationship. Dress codes, mandatory training, required methods, and discipline all point toward "employee."
Here's the key idea that runs through all three tests: COURTS LOOK AT WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS, NOT WHAT THE PAPERWORK SAYS. A contract can call you a contractor all day long. If the company treats you like an employee, the law says you're an employee.
Below are actual terms from a Park Place Technologies work order posted on Field Nation, next to what each one means in plain words.
WHAT THE WORK ORDER SAYS: "Follow any printed install instructions/checklists step by step."
WHAT IT MEANS: They control HOW you work. That's the #1 sign of an employee in every test.
WHAT THE WORK ORDER SAYS: Check in and out by calling Park Place, the platform, or a "bridge" line. You "may be required to attend a pre-call."
WHAT IT MEANS: You're being supervised while you work -- just from far away. Distance doesn't matter. A boss on the phone is still a boss.
WHAT THE WORK ORDER SAYS: "Time and date... is non-negotiable."
WHAT IT MEANS: They control your schedule. Real contractors set their own.
WHAT THE WORK ORDER SAYS: Dress code: slacks or khakis, collared shirt, "no 3rd party logos."
WHAT IT MEANS: They control how you look. And "no logos" means you can't even advertise your own business while working.
WHAT THE WORK ORDER SAYS: You must follow their "Code of Conduct."
WHAT IT MEANS: Company rulebooks are for employees. Even WorkMarket's own advice to companies says so.
WHAT THE WORK ORDER SAYS: "No one is being sent in your place... Failure to follow this term can result in non-payment."
WHAT IT MEANS: You personally must do the work or you don't get paid. A real business can send any qualified worker it chooses.
WHAT THE WORK ORDER SAYS: Return trips "at your expense." Late deliverables? They hire someone and take "that amount deducted from your work order."
WHAT IT MEANS: They punish you by taking money out of your pay. That's workplace discipline -- and if you're an employee, it may be an illegal deduction too.
WHAT THE WORK ORDER SAYS: No extra pay for extra time on site. All costs must be declared up front.
WHAT IT MEANS: Fixed pay, all the risk on you, no way to earn more through your own decisions. Employees at least get overtime.
WHAT THE WORK ORDER SAYS: "You will not solicit direct work from any Park Place Customers."
WHAT IT MEANS: You can never turn this work into your own customers. They've banned you from building a business.
WHAT THE WORK ORDER SAYS: Never share "rates, mode of assigning technicians, how and when paid."
WHAT IT MEANS: You can't compare pay with other techs. If you're an employee, a gag rule on pay talk is generally illegal under federal labor law.
In 2025, Field Nation rolled out the Provider Success Score (PSS). It grades every tech on three things: whether you check in on time (your last 30 jobs), whether you back out of jobs you accepted (last 30 -- a no-show costs you triple), and "buyer satisfaction" (your last 100 jobs, based on PRIVATE feedback from companies that you never get to see or answer).
Companies can filter techs by score, set minimum score requirements, and even use the score in automatic dispatch -- so a low score quietly means less work, and you may never know why.
Think about what that adds up to. The platform is running a time clock on you (the check-in score). It punishes you for turning down work you already accepted (the backout score). It keeps a secret personnel file on you that you can't read or challenge (the satisfaction score). And it uses all of it to decide how much work you get. There's a name for a system that tracks your attendance, disciplines you, keeps a file on you, and controls your workload. It's called being managed. Employees get managed. Businesses don't.
On tech forums you'll see someone say: "I made $140 for 2 hours. People at factories make $20 an hour. Quit whining." Let's do the honest math on that $140 ticket:
- The platform takes its cut (often around 12%). Now it's about $123.
- "Two hours on site" is never two hours of work. Add the drive both ways, the pre-call, the photos, the paperwork. Call it four to five hours, door to door. Now you're at $25-$30 an hour.
- As a "contractor" you pay BOTH halves of Social Security and Medicare tax -- 15.3% instead of the 7.65% an employee pays. There goes another chunk.
- Your gas, your vehicle wear, your tools, your insurance: all yours.
- No health insurance. No paid time off. No overtime. No unemployment benefits when the tickets dry up. No workers' comp if you fall off a ladder.
After real math, the "$70 an hour" tech is often making about what the factory worker makes -- except the factory worker gets injury coverage, unemployment insurance, and half his payroll taxes paid. The deal looks great right up until you get hurt, get sick, get secretly blocked by a buyer, or hit a slow month.
And here's the part almost nobody knows: EVEN IF A TECH LOVES THE ARRANGEMENT, THAT CHANGES NOTHING LEGALLY. The Supreme Court decided this long ago. In 1945 it ruled that workers cannot sign away their federal wage rights (a case called Brooklyn Savings Bank v. O'Neil). In 1985 it went further: in the Alamo Foundation case, the workers themselves INSISTED they weren't employees and didn't want protections -- and the Court said it doesn't matter what the workers say; what matters is the economic reality. Why? Because if being happy made you a contractor, every company would just hire the happy ones and pay nobody fairly. The rules protect everyone's wage floor, including the happy tech's.
The setup uses three parties, and that's not an accident. The platform (Field Nation) says: "We're just a website -- the buyer controls the work." The buyer (like Park Place) says: "They're not our workers -- they're independent vendors from a marketplace." Everyone points at someone else, and the tech is left holding the tax bill.
But look at who does what. The buyer writes the instructions, sets the schedule, supervises the call, and imposes the discipline. The platform runs the time clock, keeps the secret file, and controls access to future work. Put the two together and every single thing an employer does is being done -- it's just been split between two companies so that neither one has to answer for it.
Mostly because of one paragraph buried in the platform's user agreement: the arbitration clause. When you sign up, you agree that any dispute goes to private arbitration -- one tech, one arbitrator, behind closed doors -- instead of open court, and usually you give up the right to join a class action. Lawsuits against Field Nation over misclassification and unpaid wages have been filed, but courts sent them to arbitration; one California case ended in a private settlement with payments to a group of techs. No public verdict, no precedent, no headlines. The quiet isn't proof the model is legal. The quiet is the strategy.
There's one door arbitration can't close: STATE AGENCIES. If a tech files for unemployment benefits, or files a wage claim with the state labor department, the STATE decides whether he was really an employee -- and no private contract can take that decision away. In Illinois, unemployment claims use the strict ABC test. One tech's claim can trigger an audit that covers every tech the company used. Historically, that's how models like this one crack open.
Cases like this are won with everyday records. Keep:
- Screenshots of every work order as posted -- especially when what happened on site was different.
- Call logs: every pre-call, check-in, and bridge call -- how long, and who was directing you.
- Every written check-in rule, checklist, and dress code.
- The pay math: platform fees taken out of expense money, deductions, unpaid extra time.
- Anything in writing threatening non-payment, return trips at your cost, or deductions.
- What happens to your score and your work volume after you decline jobs or report problems.
Keep messages inside the platform when you can -- it timestamps everything for you.
A contractor is hired for a result; an employee is told how, when, and where -- and these techs are told how, when, and where, in writing. They carry every risk of running a business while being denied every freedom that defines one. The 1099 isn't describing the relationship -- it's just moving the costs from the company's side of the table to yours.
WHERE THIS COMES FROM (PLAIN SOURCES LIST)
- The ABC test: California Supreme Court, Dynamex v. Superior Court (2018), and California Labor Code sections 2775-2787 (the "AB 5" law). New Jersey Supreme Court cases Hargrove v. Sleepy's (2015), Carpet Remnant Warehouse (1991), and East Bay Drywall (2022); New Jersey's new ABC regulations take effect October 1, 2026. Massachusetts General Laws ch. 149 sec. 148B. Illinois unemployment law, 820 ILCS 405/212.
- The federal test: U.S. Supreme Court, United States v. Silk (1947) and Rutherford Food v. McComb (1947). U.S. Department of Labor rules: the 2024 rule (still used in private lawsuits) and the replacement rule proposed February 26, 2026 (not final yet).
- The control test: U.S. Supreme Court, Nationwide Mutual Insurance v. Darden (1992); IRS worker-classification guidance at irs.gov.
- "Contract labels don't matter": Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Alexander v. FedEx (2014) -- FedEx drivers were employees despite contracts calling them contractors; FedEx later paid roughly $240 million in settlements across 20 states.
- "Worker happiness doesn't matter": U.S. Supreme Court, Brooklyn Savings Bank v. O'Neil (1945) and Tony & Susan Alamo Foundation v. Secretary of Labor (1985).
- The dispatch-supervision comparison: a March 2026 federal court judgment (reported by the Troutman Pepper Locke independent-contractor law blog) found workers supervised by a dispatch office and disciplined under company rules were employees, in a Department of Labor case worth millions.
- The Provider Success Score: Field Nation's own published pages -- fieldnation.com/success-score, the My Business Dashboard page, and its 2025 product-release announcements describing the timeliness, backout, and buyer-satisfaction scoring and the buyer-side filters.
- Park Place work order: document provided to the author, July 2026 (quoted verbatim in Section 4).
- Field Nation litigation and arbitration record: secondary reporting (legalclarity.org, December 2025) -- a lower-reliability source, used carefully; no public court verdict on Field Nation's model has been located.
One honest note: some facts genuinely point the other way -- techs can decline offers, counter-bid on price, work for many buyers at once, and use their own tools. A company's lawyer will lean on those. But none of them answers the three questions in Section 2, and in an ABC state, none of them gets past the "main business" prong.
Prepared July 11, 2026. General information, not legal advice. If this describes your situation, a state wage claim, an unemployment filing, or a consult with an employment lawyer are the practical next steps.
Yes I know it's not FN but they have certainly migrated with bad pay to another platform...
So I saw a smart safe removal that I didn't think too much about it and figured it was on my way to something else, so easily done. Arrive early and go to change the time but obviously it's a problem because no one answers the support number that you're supposed to coordinate with even though the people doing the work order have already reached out to make sure you're on your way there.
I walk in and tell them what I'm there for, have paperwork in my hand and they show me the smart safe. It needs to be removed and they are kind of surprised because they have been putting money in the safe and no one from Garda has pulled the money out in a couple of weeks.
I call the people that were making sure that I'm on my way and explain everything and they tell me it will have to be rescheduled but then the company who's safe it actually is calls me and says they'll get back with me after I've been released. I check out and have left but now the people that managed the safe expect me to go back and do it anyway and just make sure the safe gets returned with the money in it. I have to tell you that's a hard no in my particular instance. They were not happy.
After all the work I've done for financial institutions and retail places that take cash handling very seriously, there is no way that I am pulling a safe apart that's full of cash.
Imagine what could go wrong... How much support would you get from the platform on that one?
They needed someone to do an alignment of a sat dish. Asked them all the appropriate questions as to location and access. Made offer. Crickets.
Time passes and now it's a problem because work needs accomplished and they entertain the offer and agree to it. Arrive on site but no sat meter as per their representations. 90 minutes later it's off site with another techs name.
Absolutely unsafe access needing harness and tie off with second person or 60 foot boom lift. Still want MDF checked to see if that is the problem so we do that. No fixing it. So released from site but they demand a sign off sheet that isn't included in the work order. Sent via email as PDF and they will call back later after you get signatures on it. Like really?
Needs a closeout number to finish ticket. So I request closeout code and get a return call. Seems since they have had so many techs steal sat meters they don't generate the code until you return the meter and they examine it to make sure it's good. Told them I'm not that tech. They need to pay people that are good so no one steals their shit. They get what they pay for. Added that it's not ok and if that's what they do ill never work for them again since it's essentially a month to wait for them to pay.
Meanwhile FN is dinging you about not closing the ticket. Escalated ticket. So I'm sure I'll be dinged with the secret scoring process but screw these people that do shit off the platform we are supposed to live by but they aren't transparent and don't put everything on the ticket.
You all have been warned. Provider beware.
Just curious if any current or former employees are familiar with the S-240 fire problems because they don't have a spark arrestor or materials to eliminate the exhaust and engine heat that cause the carburetor/fuel line to easily ignite. The more expensive models have shielding and precautions but this model doesn't. While I understand that there's reluctance to spend any money to remedy these issues it reminds me of Ford with Pintos years ago.
I just watched a mower completely consume itself and after it happened I realized exactly how this happened. Just wondering if anybody else has anything to add. Feel free to direct message me. I'm kind of pissed actually.