You missed this bit:

> after a bit of an ear bashing

If someone from my old employer calls and asks me politely for a bit of help with something I know well, I'd help.

If they call to yell at me about how I left behind a fragile system or how I left them in the lurch by quitting, the correct response is to tell them to get fucked, if they then ask for help after that, the correct response is to tell them to go fuck themselves.

Normalising that kind of abusive behaviour is not going to improve the lives of the co-workers you left behind.

My ex-manager was the reason I left. He was.... odd.

You could warn him in advance about an impending negative issue. You could use lights, fireworks and even shout in his ears, but he would ignore you.

The the issue would occur and cause problems, big problems.

He would then ask "Why didn't you warn me?"

I would pull out my paper trail of emails, meeting notes etc.

To which he would reply "You didn't try hard enough to get my attention."

And that is why you don't put a career salesman in charge of your IT department.

Better compromise:

“This is exactly the sort of behavior that made me leave. Do not contact me again. If you need something from me, have Steve call me instead.”

Let the people who actually gave a shit about you be your point of contact, not baby Napoleon.

What benefit is there in saying this to baby Napoleon directly?

Then you have angry baby Napoleon directing Steve to communicate with you and nobody wins.

Alternatively: Help your co-workers and friends by normalising getting paid for real work outside of what is contracted.

That would cross my mind. Most potential employers I've encountered have usually asked for references from my last two jobs. On another occasion I had to undergo a background check which involved contacting my last 15 years worth of employers. So no matter how much I may have disliked an employer I would be unwilling to burn bridges until I knew I would never need to rely on them again.

This is why you cannot get anything more from your previous rmployerd than a certificate of work in France.

If they call and ask they are in complete, dangerous illegality (I had once an American company czll me about an ex employee and they could not understand that).

Some companies used to ask for references, they were referred to friends and they do not ask anymore (this is a general case).

If you run into one of those where you don't have a choice, the best phrasing I've found to explain why I left was "hostile work environment."

I had one of those for about a year and leaving after just over a year was a question I got used to answering.

Most people won't give a bad personal reference anymore because they are too afraid of being sued. We just say yes, the person worked here from this time to that time.

>because they are too afraid of being sued

This is a cliche but it can't possibly be true. I mean, it is extremely expensive to file a lawsuit, you probably lose, and nobody will ever hire you again, because it is public record.

Even if they're being a bit unreasonable, the momentary satisfaction of telling them to F Off is probably not worth the risk of it coming back to bite you some day.

If you don't want to tell them to F Off for this reason, you can contact their line manager, HR or customer service department and ask them to do it for you.

The kind of person to lay into you like this is not going to give you a glowing reference whatever you do.

That is probably true. What I meant is that I would simply break off the conversation at that point. And, yes, if they kept pursuing it, I would either contact their manager if I had a good relationship or have HR tell them to knock it off.

Asking to be paid for work is not being rude.

Spending 10 minutes on the phone to answer questions is one thing, as long as they are respectful, but more than that means that they want you to work for them.

I agree although in some circumstances, contracting for your former employer may be violating your employment agreement with your current one.

That does not mean that you should do it for free (which might still be a contractual breach, btw).

Theoretically maybe. In practice, no one to a first approximation is going to have an issue with you spending an hour helping a prior employer with some cleanup related to your prior job. Employment agreements tend to use words like outside employment/consulting/etc. They don't (and it would probably be unenforceable if they did) generally forbid you from talking to a former employer.

In some circumstances, it may even be violating your termination agreement with the former one.

Often, if made redundant by a company, you cannot return to work for them (as employee or contractor) for a year, otherwise you have to pay back your redundancy pay.

That leads to a potentially hilarious conversation about rates.

"I'll do it, my rates are 100 per hour plus 10K if you want me to start before June next year"

If that's a contractual obligation between them and you they just need to waive it in writing so that you're protected.

That being said, the issue with redundancy packages is that taxes are involved and those guys will be inflexible if they find out that your package turns out not to be tax-free after all.

I don’t think it’s rude to give them your rates.... but then again I have been only working with consultancies for the past 15+ years, so even in house work gets a billable rate attached to it.

Anything that takes more than an hour should be billed. If the guys at the company are really your friends, they would fight to see you get paid.