Third Time's a Charm...

Company #3 - In an attempt to shorten my posts, I had split this experience into six “pre-written” shorter posts. In the end, what is in the past is just a small part of this journey, so I decided to scrap the six posts and only open up this very fresh wound once. This job was THE perfect fit. It used my skills and talents well. I took what I had learned from previous jobs and applied all of those lessons. I was working hard, getting to interact with and help people, and getting to organize and put procedures in place to help this business run as smoothly as possible. There was one problem: people don't have owners manuals and you never know what personalities you're going to get. I find value in paying attention to details. I spent hours upon hours combing through details finding mistake after mistake. I was told I needed to have more fun and that if a job wasn’t going to be fun, it wasn’t worth going to work. I was excited every time I found a small mistake to fix because that meant preventing a much larger mistake down the road; and finding a small mistake early means saving time and money down the road too. Being able to contribute in that way to the business WAS FUN for me (as weird as that sounds). That didn’t stop the same message being told to me again and again - I need to be less serious and have more fun. It was an odd dichotomy to feel like I felt more responsible for the business than the boss-man did.

I should note that somewhere in the middle of my career I realized that I care, deeply! As mentioned in an earlier post, some people can work, go home, and not let the stress of a job affect them. I do not know how to turn on an “I-don’t-care” button. I do care. Co-workers aren’t random people to put-up-with on a daily basis. They are people I spend a large amount of my time with. If something in a business or relationship isn’t working, I desire to see it get restored or resolved. Restorative, Responsibility and Harmony are all part of my “strength’s” – it’s an interesting mix. If not handled carefully, these three can quickly become weaknesses. I take responsibility for my work and my relationships. It is who I am.

Anyway, through a variety of circumstances, my workload increased…significantly. An already serious, hard-working employee was being asked to carry a burden far larger than any one employee should have been carrying. This didn’t exactly help with the “have more fun” concept. I tried to set boundaries, and somehow they failed. I was doing tasks that fit my talents perfectly, but too much of something you love still results in burnout. I agonized for months over how to make this great job work somehow, but I finally handed over my two-weeks-notice letter. The response, “You can turn in your key and your time sheet and just leave now.”

Wow! What a kick in the gut!  I spent months talking to my husband about what the right thing to do would be and in a few short seconds it was done.  These were my thoughts then, and I still ponder these today:

~What is it about me that is so distasteful that you feel like you are better off without any admin at all than having me around to work for two more weeks?
~What action of mine has suggested that I am such a poor employee that I would do anything to compromise the success of this business in the next two weeks?  What action has suggested I can’t be trusted?
~You now have no one to do the admin work.  I set up systems and tracked it all and now I won’t have the opportunity to train someone else in it.  I still care about this business and am sad this is how it’s ending.

There is a make-up in my genes, the very way God made me, that won’t allow me to not care.  I DO care.  I am very sad at the broken relationships and the abandonment with which I feel I left that business.  I continue to pray for the people who go in and out of the doors each day and hope that they are doing well despite the crazy ending to a tough relationship.

That pretty much brings you up to speed - so the job hunting journey truly begins…giddy up!