How to move on from a vital position?

[Trueturning]

A very honest and enlightening appraisal you have provided for us. I appreciate your candor. It is always a challenging thing to break through the fog and see clearly ones reality.

You seem to me to have answered your concerns.

Four frogs on a lily pad and two decide to jump off and so how many are left? The answer is four two decided to jump off but changed their minds. What small peabrained minds which they have no less. Likely ideal for transplant for many folk as we may meet.

Be glad you finally saw it. Many remain loyal and committed as a rule and there is nothing wrong with that until too much wasted time passes. Count yourself fortunate and leave in a manner that they are not as mad as they could be as on many such times such a employer may wish to stumble you. If they can not have you no one should. If that happens see now that a scenario like that should be shaken off with extreme prejudice.

Good luck when you see that you should move on just leave.

Best wishes for you. Be excited about the change it is necessary. Staying there given what you divulge does not in any way bode good outcomes. They are not progressing by any stretch of the imagination if your eval is accurate.

Best regards and best of luck. Make your plan and follow through.

 

[camscan]

Have you tried Blackfast Chemicals?

 

[barbter]

Have you tried Blackfast Chemicals?

Have they got any good job openings?

 

[camscan]

Have they got any good job openings?

Is Spain so bad that you are willing to commute every day?

 

[barbter]

Is Spain so bad that you are willing to commute every day?

Not.
Yet.....

 

[camscan]

Not.
Yet.....

Well you're not dossing down at my place,have a word with the old man.
Good news for you there,he's a veggie.

 

[barbter]

Well you're not dossing down at my place,have a word with the old man.
Good news for you there,he's a veggie.

Stop knocking him.
I've spoken with him - very coherent!

 

[ttrager]

There is good advice given by others. At the risk of repeating some of that:

1) Making the Decision you must make. Only you can weigh all the factors relevant to your life, including your age, what you think your competencies and worth are, the state of your current employer, etc.
2) Take your time and start surfing for a better opportunity. Keep your cards to your chest, don't broadcast your intent. You need the safe-time to scout.
3) Be confident and recognize you aren't being underhanded. In the end, this is NOT about you being ungrateful. It's about fit and finish after 10 years. It's fair for employers to expect loyalty from employes, and in like fashion Employers are obligated to understand they are on the hook to run their operations in a manner that, in natural fashion, retains employees of their own free will. We all know if there's a better opportunity out there (global statement, not just $), common sense indicates that will be considered.

I don't want to push you in a direction, so please bear with me: One of the biggest mistakes throughout my lifetime was NOT leaving a place when I should have. I stuck around because of how much I had invested into managing those projects and felt "my name" was on them.

What I didn't see at the time was that to too high a degree what was going on was: Use the "agreeable fellow" as the target dummy and convenient gopher. I've generalized here, but I hope you get the drift. Companies (that have management / leadership challenges) absolutely LOVE to have hard working agreeable-people sweeping up or shouldering tasks that otherwise would/should/could be handled by other or more people.

So relax, take your time, keep quiet about it, and do some scouting in a relaxed and thought out manner. That's key.

If you are older, you have a different factor to consider: Do you stay because, in the end, that's smarter because you don't have that many years left to work? If you are younger, my personal feeling is now is the time to learn how to "dance" in job seeking. That, in itself, is good life experience.

Lastly: Be stoic, and practical. No place is Utopia. When sticking your neck out for a change it's entirely possible you end up someplace you want to leave in a year. That could happen. Consider that risk, own it, and if it should happen rinse and repeat the process.

It's like fishing. You keep casting.

Anyway, good luck to you. Be confident in your abilities. By your description and knowing nothing else you are a self-initiator with enough skills to have taken on some important duties.

There are a lot of places that want that kind of person in their shop.

 

[camscan]

Vital position

Just what is a vital position?

 

[barbter]

Just what is a vital position?

Head above water...paddling hard.... ?

 

[jccaclimber]

<snip>
The sad thing is, the GM is about in the same spot. All the reward he got was a pretty decent raise after 3-4 years of promises - which was then promptly cut back in a few months after the owners over-leveraged the company to add a third location and part of the business. He’s as torn as I am, probably worse because everyone above him is family by marriage.
<snip>

Just to really spell this out, someone higher than you in the food chain, who is family with management, had his raise delayed for years, then reneged on almost as soon as it appeared, so that the owners could make more money? You aren't even family, and you think they won't screw you?

This tells me the GM, however well intentioned, isn't afforded the tools to retain you. Frankly it sounds like he isn't afforded the tools to retain himself.

We could take this from a different angle, the low pay they've given you in the past, combined with the education and experience they have given you to get to where you are now (capability wise) sums up to decent compensation. If you were continuing to get a fine and ever expanding education out of it (that you couldn't also get somewhere else for more money) it might make sense, but it sounds like this isn't the case.

 

[bryan_machine]

"vital" is not relevent. What is relevent is to move forward in one's career without unnecessarily making people angry or burning bridges. Keep up your work standards until you are ready to leave, give reasonable notice, don't be a jerk without a really good reason to be a jerk. In other words, don't burn bridges or piss people off.

And *these ARE the good old days* - if the market confirms you for better opportunities, take them.

 

[Jashley73]

The sad thing is, the GM is about in the same spot. All the reward he got was a pretty decent raise after 3-4 years of promises - which was then promptly cut back in a few months after the owners over-leveraged the company to add a third location and part of the business. He’s as torn as I am, probably worse because everyone above him is family by marriage. I know for a fact many people would, gradually, leave if the GM left because he’s about the only hope of anything good happening - and he’s got two hands and a leg tied behind his back by his family.

As others have already pointed out, this is all that needs to be said.

You are now, and always will be 2nd, maybe 3rd class, for as long as you stay there. IF you want to see what your future looks like at this company, look back 3-6 months to the present, and continue that projection. That is what your future there will be.

Is your resume' updated?
Have 3, 5, 10 places nearby that seem interesting enough that you'd reach out to them?

If you need help with your resume, send me a private message.

 

[david n]

Wonder if we'll ever get an update from the OP?...............................prolly not....................

 

[charlie gary]

Hopefully he comes back after January 1st to tell us about his new job.

 

[TheMachinist27]

Wonder if we'll ever get an update from the OP?...............................prolly not....................

You will! I’m just biding my time. I try to be one of those to with mouth shut, ears open. Or in this case, eyes open, and… thumbs off the keypad I guess. Haha.

Right now I’ve just been doing some thinking, working on a resume, trying to figure out how to lay my concerns out. My coworker who is leaving to a new job wraps his time up with us soon and with it, any feeling of something to look forward to goes out the window for me. I guess it should tell me something that working with a guy who has worked here half a year that I’ve been training and swapping knowledge with, is what gives me the little bit of enjoyment I get anymore. But it’s about to be all gone.

Thanks again to everyone’s advice and wisdom. Moving on after 10 years in the first shop I’ve been at is hard to swallow. And it doesn’t help that things are up and down. One day it’s a good conversation with the shop manager, the next it’s two days full of reminders why I haven’t had an ounce of job satisfaction in at least 9 months.

Who knows, maybe a shop of my own may be a thing one day. Feels like I’ve learned a lot of what not to do. I imagine many of you gentlemen know that feeling!

 

[mhajicek]

My coworker who is leaving to a new job wraps his time up with us soon and with it, any feeling of something to look forward to goes out the window for me.

If that's true, there's no need to lay out your concerns. You already know you have to leave, all that's left is when and to where.

 

[jccaclimber]

It’s been a decade, and I don’t get the impression the GM has hidden any issues from management. They already know, even if they don’t care. I’m one to regularly voice my concerns, but you have no influence with the real decision makers. As a result, and seeing as you need to leave anyways, all it’s going to do is endanger your current income or work environment.
The time to leave feedback, if you insist on it, is after you have your start date at your next job and are at the end of the notice period in your current role. Any sooner and you are endangering your role or inviting the owners to put unwarranted doubts in your mind.

A few jobs ago the plant manager asked me why I was resigning. I asked him if he really needed to ask that question, to which he replied “No, I know why, congratulations and stay in touch.”

 

[joecrs]

As a shop owner for 37 years I am seeing some good advice and some bad advice here, first no one here knows the real situation at the place you work, you may not even know or it the shop manager may not have all the details either.So given that it would be a horrible idea to leave on bad terms, many small shop owners struggle day to day just to keep the doors open .Many go into debt and go without personal pay to assure the people working for them have jobs. Some times it may be through their own fault some times not, some times the work just dries up due to bad times. I can already hear some people in here saying well just go out and get more work and to them I will say you go try it and see how difficult that is. Anyway there is no point in destroying what could be a great reference for you in your search for a new job. Let me also suggest that money is not everything I have worked for a few bad places in the past decent pay but I dreaded going to work every day. So if it is strictly a money thing talk to the boss and see what he says, if you are a valuable employee to him he is very likely to work with you. For those that say you are easy to replace clearly they are out of touch with the reality of the situation out there, no one is going into this field anymore it is damn near impossible to hire some one that can read a 6 inch scale.If your boss knows this and is semi smart he will try to work with you because you are NOT easy to replace at all. As for learning new tech yes that is always good I always tell people to suck up free training when ever possible it just makes you a more valuable employee but also keep in mind a person in training does not start at the top rate of pay so you may need to put in some time to earn that top dollar. For those telling you to just hit the door without notice pay no attention to them that is a stupid idea under any circumstances it will only hurt you and burn a possible valuable bridge that you may need in the future. You can not treat all companies the same, large corporations work differently than small ones do and unless you know for a fact what is going on there and what if any the future plans are I would give the boss the benefit of the doubt and try to have a talk with him. I do not know how well you know the boss or if you ever talk to him but he is the one you need to speak with not a manager who may or may not know what is really going on. I would also mention to the boss that you are taking on extra responsibilities he may not even be aware of. Larger companies tend to have a disconnect between lower and upper level management and remember friends are different inside of work than outside they have jobs to watch out for too. Middle management is about the worst position you can be put in you take shit from the top and from the bottom and have to some how make it all work, not an easy job. You have nothing to lose by being decent about this except a bit of your time.

 

[Nano Vujkovic]

To the OP
If the owners thought you were vital, they would not put you in a situation where you’re looking for a new employment. One way or another they would communicate to you how important you are to the operation. If that hasn’t happened, you are probably not vital in their opinion.