[TheForge] Celebration! - Long and Way OT

[williamsiron at comcast.net]

Nice to hear you will be in a less stressful environment. I hope to see you at Gichner's or when you come down for the Joint meeting at Furnace Town in March.

Mark Williams
Snow Hill, Maryland

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: Bruce Freeman <freemab222 at yahoo.com> 

> 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 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________________________________________________________ 
> ____ 
> Get easy, one-click access to your favorites. 
> Make Yahoo! your homepage. 
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs 
> _______________________________________________ 
> Manage membership or unsubscribe at: 
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/theforge 
> theforge mail list group photo site is 
> http://www.photoaccess.com 
> Login: blacksmithblacksmith at hotmail.com 
> password: anvil 
> ___________ 
> 
>