[TheForge] Celebration! - Long and Way OT

[Bruce Freeman]

Well, gang, we share our ups and downs here, so I
decided I'd share my latest good news.

After MANY years of trying, I've finally managed to qu
it my d e a d - e n d j o b and go to work in a field
of very great interest to me.  (The field is so
esoteric that it isn't worth describing here.  Let it
suffice that it is a form of chromatography - which
you all know about through Quincy.  Until I settle
into this thing, I won't be mentioning the name of the
company - which you will never have heard of anyway.)

This is after negotiations of increasing pace and
seriousness over a period of about six months,
involving hiring a CPA and an attorney working for me.
 I am now the CEO (translation: "chief cook and bottle
washer") of a division I'll refer to as "CI" of the
aforementioned company, and I will soon be elected to
the board of directors of the parent company. 
(Currently, CI has one employee - namely me!  The
parent company has a total of five shareholders.  This
is NOT h i g h  f i n a n c e s!)

I have Andy Vida to thank for this, because without
his interest and enthusiasm, I might never have looked
into the possibility again.  Andy has been in on this
from the start, and we are now both shareholders in
the company in question.

My first interest in this field was twenty years ago
or so.  I met and became friends with a fellow who ran
his own company doing business in the field, and it
wasn't long before I broached the subject of jo in ing
his firm.  But his finan cial situation (which I have
always been convinced I could have turned around) was
so poor that he simply couldn't h i r e me.  

He and I went through several serious negotiations
over the years, trying to figure out how to get me
"aboard."  The last of these was in 2004.  Later that
year, he died!  I thought that was the end of all
possibility for me to get into this field!  This, and
other downturns in my life, pushed me into therapy for
the next year.

But around the middle of 2007, I was discussing the
field of my interest with Andy, who'd just got his
MBA.  IIRC, I was trying to encourage Andy into going
into business, and presented several ideas for
business to him.  

For some reason, this field just clicked with him.  He
saw the growth potential I did, and saw what needed to
be done to achieve it the same way I did.  Over the
next month or so, we started drawing up business plans
and doing market research.  

In the course of this we quickly stumbled onto a group
in another state that was doing the exact same thing! 
We met them, and practically found ourselves ending
each others' sentences, our ideas meshed so well. 
What followed was the negotiations culminating in my
writing my own employment agreement (!). 

The big catch?  No salary.  I will be paid when there
is money to pay me.  In fact, this has cost money so
far, as I've paid an attorney and a CPA and purchased
stock.  But my confidence in the field, in this
company, and in myself is such that I don't consider
this an excessive risk.   (This is helped by the fact
that I have determined I've been earning at least
twice what I've been spending for the past few years. 
My retirment accounts are well nourished, so I can
spend some of my savings on living expenses without
fear of where my next meal will come from.)

Last Friday I walked into my boss's office, handed him
my resig nation letter, extended my hand and told him,
"You can be the first to congratulate me on my
retirement."  Despite my differences with him and the
manager, I wasn't curt or rude ONCE!  (The temptation
to say, "Take this  j o b  and  s h o v e  it." or "F
u c k you very much." was certainly present.  I'm
proud of myself for surpressing it.  I don't think
I'll regret the missed opportunity TOO much! ;^)

I spent much of the rest of the day saying goodbye to
people, some of whom I've know nearly 20 years.  I
spent the whole day smiling.  THAT was no effort at
all!  The goodbyes I received were very warm and
heart-felt.  I got hugs from three of the ladies! 
Perhaps the most moving goodbye was from a collegue of
foreign birth with whom I'd worked for a year on a
difficult, challenging assignment.  He was obviously
upset I was leaving, probably because I'd taught him
some tricks of the trade and had been of some support
to him with the boss(es) when there were problems.  I
told him (and only him) that he could phone me at home
(my new "office") any time  he needed help or advice.

The truly amazing thing was how screwed up HR was
through all this.  Thursday, I requested a 'retirement
package' as instructed to do on the website.  They had
no clue what I was talking about.  (Turns out that the
folks who man the phone know it only by several names,
like "pension package" and "401k package".)  I'd
printed off a procedure I'd found on line for handling
the resignation of an employee, and my boss and the HR
man were working from a xerox of MY copy of this for
the entire day!  I still haven't got all the
information I need, and I'll have to follow up with HR
on Monday.

With 20-20 hindsight, I see I should have done this
years ago, risk be damned.  I'd have been a hell of a
lot happier!

Aside from being a shareholder, Andy has not yet
officially joined the company.  Once this becomes
profitable, I expect he'll be joining me (unless he
comes across something else he'd rather do) in running
this firm out of New Jersey. There's going to be a LOT
of work to do. 

Thanks for listening.

Bruce
NJ








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