Yes, these are the words I said when I walked into work this morning.
Everyone close to me knows that I've been "done" with my job for a long time now. It used to be a pretty cool company to work for, with lots of opportunity. Lately it's been an unfriendly work environment, completely demotivational, and on top of that our product is no longer competitive with what others are offering. My base income has been slashed to the point of being completely replaceable as our clients get taken away by competitors because we have either bad pricing, or rude and clueless customer service staff at our help desk. Done. D. O. N. E. Done.
Since I am venting, I might also mention that fact that I have never felt very appreciated there. My decision was solidified today when dealing with the cashing in of my stock options. I ran a top 3 office for them my first year managing Tacoma. This means that my office was one of the 3 most productive for an entire year. A few months later I was issued stock options with a select group of people. It seemed like I was finally being rewarded for proving myself after years of being told I was too timid/young/female to give a management position to. Today I found out that I received the smallest number of options in that group. Smallest BY FAR. Today I also gave my resignation to the guy who replaced me a few months into my role as the Houston manager, because I could never seem to make the lofty sales quota they gave to the Houston office. My replacement has never hit his quota, either (and actually turns in about the same numbers that I did... some months even less), yet he still sits in that chair almost 3 years later. Is it because he is a guy's guy and can guzzle beers with the rest of the boys?
Sour grapes aside, their lack of belief in me gave me a very easy out. I am now officially a kept woman. Staying at home, taking care of the teenagers, doing a bit of coursework at the local U, and appreciating my wonderful husband to be who pays my way in life.
Or am I?
In real life, everyone, I started my own business last week. I will be doing the exact same thing as I was before... but I keep all the profit. I call the shots. No more silly trackers explaining how I spend my time. No more grief about making quotas. No more pressure to lie to customers about pricing in order to make the sale (which I refuse to do). No more workshops given to me by people who I trained. No more politics. No more BS at all, in fact.
I don't want any trouble. I am not going for their clients. I just want to sit in my little office and build my customer base. Eventually Jeff will be able to join me full time (he is AMAZING at sales), and I hope that we'll have something BIG. If we want. If we decide we just want to do what we can do on our own, and have no employees, that is totally cool, too. The point is, there are choices now. The point is also that I no longer have to do all the work, fix people's mistakes, and be the face of the company while getting paid 25% of the profit just because someone else had the balls to go open an LLC and hire a payroll company to cut me a check.
I'm pretty damn happy. I haven't had a plan in a long time, and this is a good one. More to come as things unfold.
And I know, I really need to get more of the house pictures up, but as you can see, it's been a busy week!
2 comments:
Good for you.
I hate it that the "boys network" is still an issue all of these years later. It was way back in 1973 that I got passed over for a promotion at the IRS with the given reason that the guy who got it "was a man with a wife to support". Same age, same experience, but I was (of course) smarter with better evaluations. And heck, I had a husband to support and I didn't see the difference. Today they have to give you a different reason, but they make it still come out the same, don't they.
After that I made my supervisor's life miserable enough that he granted me a transfer/promotion from accounting to the computer section. I'm pretty sure it was just to get rid of me.
You go, girl. The only hard thing about working at home can be staying on task.
Thanks, Carolyn! I have heard so many similar stories over the years. I went to a women's college and came out with the idea that everything is equal in the workplace, and that women can climb just as high as they want. I'm sure that can be true, but the female friends I have that really climb the ranks in the corporate world seem to be doing it in female dominated professions where they are competing with other women. Those of us who are interested in sales, finance, computers... still have to deal with the same crap attitudes and "boys network" values you were dealing with back in 1973. You're right, they word it differently. It's all the same garbage, though.
I'm excited. It will definitely be a challenge to stay on task at times, but there is a lot more incentive to do well when you're working for yourself.
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