First off, before I proceed much further, I would like to thank those of you who responded to my post about family advice in regards to whether or not I should move in with Dad after Mom's passing....I didn't have much time to post then, and should have thanked all of you a lot sooner.....I got some absolutely great advice and took it, and it was dead right on.....moved in and currently helping dad out with cleaning out the house, and you guys helped me out considerably in just confirming a move that I thought was correct to begin with.....
My current dilemma is with my job. I am in the vending business, and have been with the same company for about 12 years now. When I first started with the company, service was a priority, machines got fixed in a timely matter, and management was communicative with our accounts in regards to calling back and discussing matters about the accounts and the machines in place.
Lately, in the last few years, things have changed. Machines have been out of order longer than they should be......there has been a lot longer wait fixing some machines in some of our lesser accounts than has been the case with machines in our "A" accounts. It appears that management is jumping on fixing things in the "A" accounts and letting problems in the lower accounts slide.
As I am writing this there is a note I left back at the shop informing my employer/manager that an account told me they wanted a newer, more updated machine or they were going to call our local competitor for service...they have asked for a couple of months and my employer has never bothered to call them back......seems my boss has a way of putting things off......if he decides to switch machines it's a delayed process.....if he doesn't feel that the account deserves an upgrade or a machine they want, he ignores the notes and stalls and just figures that the accounts will give up and concede that they won't receive the machines/things they are asking for. He rarely returns calls in cases like these. Usually what happens is that I leave repeated messages for my boss, and in a couple months the account owner calls up and issues some sort of ultimatum in which case my boss is talking something to the effect of "We want your business and we want to keep you happy..." Then something that usually takes weeks now gets put on the schedule and taken care of in 2 or 3 days. Another one of those situations is on the immediate horizon.
The boss doesn't want to be confrontational with account owners and fears losing accounts for having said "no", and more or less leaves me in the middle until $hit hits the fan and management has a direct talk with an account owner. So, not having said "no" things get put in jeopardy anyway.
Money has been an issue lately, in that summer has always been a slow time in our industry, and I know that my employer has borrowed money from his relatives to help pay the bills, returning the money during the fall and winter when business is strong and money more plentiful.......(maybe that should be more of a warning sign to me...)
Our service tech who fixes the machines does a great job fixing the machines but I feel overall that he is stubborn and hardheaded....he usually has a split-second answer for any topic or issue, rarely does he ever give any consideration for others opinions or give them any thought......usually most things brought up around him end up in some debate or argument....hardly the team player.
As an example, I would give the case of a service call a while back. The tech lives about 40 miles out of town, and a service call was needed in an account about 20 miles from the shop, in an account that he drove within 5 blocks of everyday to and from work. The account called up needing service, it was a call that either one of us could fix, yet he asks me when's the next time I'll be by there. It wasn't that I was unwilling to go on the call, it was the fact that he drove by there everyday and more or less refused to volunteer to leave a half an hour early, grab his tools, and have it done with and fixed the same day. Christ on some calls I've volunteered to go before anybody asked me, and he's pawning off a quick fix that he drives by everyday. I suppose 10 blocks round trip would have crucified his gas mileage?
I've tried my best to be an asset to the company........I've volunteered for service calls and went on calls from owners calling me at home, dropping whatever I was doing to help out our accounts, some on busy Friday or Saturday nights when both of us would have taken a huge hit from a game out of order.....I've tried to take my vacation days during slow times when routes didn't need rescheduling or other people needed to fill in......some of those times when someone else filled in, I went back myself next time on the normal two-week schedule only to find a months worth of dust all over monitors and machines. Some help my fill in was. Took the money and ran. I ran tournaments at one time, and during a week long vacation I took, my boss filled in for me to run the tournament. He showed up 5 minutes before it was ready to start, leaving everybody wondering and taking entries in a hurry.....
Like I said, I've tried to keep up my part, keeping machines clean.......I've had 1.5 days of genuine sick time off from my job, there were days that I should have stayed home but there was work needed to be done and I pushed on. I've been honest with the collections, and believe me there were times I could have really hosed everyone involved. A few years back I returned $200 that a bank overpaid me.....most people said I should have kept it but I decided to do the right thing.
Not that it's all been rosy on my part. I've made mistakes, but I've tried to correct them on my own time with my own money and vehicles, not costing my boss any money of his own. If I forgot a part or something, I have in the past explained to the account and told them I would be back later on after work.....yet the boss is still mortified that I forgot if he finds out, forgets that I'm covering it completely on my own time and money and berates me.....I guess he thinks I shouldn't make any mistakes, that everyday should be flawless on my part.
(continued).......
My current dilemma is with my job. I am in the vending business, and have been with the same company for about 12 years now. When I first started with the company, service was a priority, machines got fixed in a timely matter, and management was communicative with our accounts in regards to calling back and discussing matters about the accounts and the machines in place.
Lately, in the last few years, things have changed. Machines have been out of order longer than they should be......there has been a lot longer wait fixing some machines in some of our lesser accounts than has been the case with machines in our "A" accounts. It appears that management is jumping on fixing things in the "A" accounts and letting problems in the lower accounts slide.
As I am writing this there is a note I left back at the shop informing my employer/manager that an account told me they wanted a newer, more updated machine or they were going to call our local competitor for service...they have asked for a couple of months and my employer has never bothered to call them back......seems my boss has a way of putting things off......if he decides to switch machines it's a delayed process.....if he doesn't feel that the account deserves an upgrade or a machine they want, he ignores the notes and stalls and just figures that the accounts will give up and concede that they won't receive the machines/things they are asking for. He rarely returns calls in cases like these. Usually what happens is that I leave repeated messages for my boss, and in a couple months the account owner calls up and issues some sort of ultimatum in which case my boss is talking something to the effect of "We want your business and we want to keep you happy..." Then something that usually takes weeks now gets put on the schedule and taken care of in 2 or 3 days. Another one of those situations is on the immediate horizon.
The boss doesn't want to be confrontational with account owners and fears losing accounts for having said "no", and more or less leaves me in the middle until $hit hits the fan and management has a direct talk with an account owner. So, not having said "no" things get put in jeopardy anyway.
Money has been an issue lately, in that summer has always been a slow time in our industry, and I know that my employer has borrowed money from his relatives to help pay the bills, returning the money during the fall and winter when business is strong and money more plentiful.......(maybe that should be more of a warning sign to me...)
Our service tech who fixes the machines does a great job fixing the machines but I feel overall that he is stubborn and hardheaded....he usually has a split-second answer for any topic or issue, rarely does he ever give any consideration for others opinions or give them any thought......usually most things brought up around him end up in some debate or argument....hardly the team player.
As an example, I would give the case of a service call a while back. The tech lives about 40 miles out of town, and a service call was needed in an account about 20 miles from the shop, in an account that he drove within 5 blocks of everyday to and from work. The account called up needing service, it was a call that either one of us could fix, yet he asks me when's the next time I'll be by there. It wasn't that I was unwilling to go on the call, it was the fact that he drove by there everyday and more or less refused to volunteer to leave a half an hour early, grab his tools, and have it done with and fixed the same day. Christ on some calls I've volunteered to go before anybody asked me, and he's pawning off a quick fix that he drives by everyday. I suppose 10 blocks round trip would have crucified his gas mileage?
I've tried my best to be an asset to the company........I've volunteered for service calls and went on calls from owners calling me at home, dropping whatever I was doing to help out our accounts, some on busy Friday or Saturday nights when both of us would have taken a huge hit from a game out of order.....I've tried to take my vacation days during slow times when routes didn't need rescheduling or other people needed to fill in......some of those times when someone else filled in, I went back myself next time on the normal two-week schedule only to find a months worth of dust all over monitors and machines. Some help my fill in was. Took the money and ran. I ran tournaments at one time, and during a week long vacation I took, my boss filled in for me to run the tournament. He showed up 5 minutes before it was ready to start, leaving everybody wondering and taking entries in a hurry.....
Like I said, I've tried to keep up my part, keeping machines clean.......I've had 1.5 days of genuine sick time off from my job, there were days that I should have stayed home but there was work needed to be done and I pushed on. I've been honest with the collections, and believe me there were times I could have really hosed everyone involved. A few years back I returned $200 that a bank overpaid me.....most people said I should have kept it but I decided to do the right thing.
Not that it's all been rosy on my part. I've made mistakes, but I've tried to correct them on my own time with my own money and vehicles, not costing my boss any money of his own. If I forgot a part or something, I have in the past explained to the account and told them I would be back later on after work.....yet the boss is still mortified that I forgot if he finds out, forgets that I'm covering it completely on my own time and money and berates me.....I guess he thinks I shouldn't make any mistakes, that everyday should be flawless on my part.
(continued).......
