After nine months of looking, interviewing with multiple companies, on 12/10/24 I finally landed a full time job with everything I needed and asked for – though I thought. In any new job, it’s pretty standard to work the first 90 days as a trial period. Indeed I worked it almost 90 days, but my employer and I both agreed we were not a good fit. Now that I have no strings attached to a confidentiality agreement, I can disclose what happened.
Lesson 1 – I took a gamble on applying for an Operations Manager job post on Craigslist. When I asked the owner why he chose Craigslist to post this job, he said the cost to post on LinkedIn and Indeed were too expensive, which I accepted because I know it to be a fact, so I let it slide. (For those of you who don’t know about Craigslist, it’s an old job posting website that was popular decades ago. I’m surprised they are still around because it’s seriously outdated, but simple and affordable. A lot of shady activity goes on there, as well as great deals).
The company was a plumbing company with about 35 employees located in the Bayview Hunter Point neighborhood of San Francisco. I worked there in 2005, so I was fine with that. My first few days were welcoming and promising, until I was exposed to their true financial status. It was another crisis situation. I discovered I have no interest in taking on another crisis situation. The money was no longer a selling factor for me. My priority was that the job I choose is sustainable and somewhere I will love to work at in a supportive role. No longer leadership role.
Lesson 2 – I discovered that training at my age was much more difficult than I had anticipated. My ability to adapt to new environments and retain new information while working with someone who is sloppy and did not share my financial values was doomed from the start. I thought taking accounting and HR experience and skills into a new industry would be a breeze. It wasn’t. My background is in leading financial and human resources operations. This place was drowning in debt and putting out fires constantly was their way of life. That did not sit well with me. I was not allowed to work in what I knew, but train for a doomed position and expected to magically fix it all. No matter how organized I was, or implementing a strategic plan was going to solve that crisis. If a company is having cash-flow problems and leadership is unwilling to change, I can’t fix it.
Lesson 3 – As someone who is committed to paying all my bills in full on time and cutting expenses when needed, I could not repeat the dirty practices in this role. The owner and predecessor made it a weekly practice on Tuesdays to go through the AP report and choose who to pay and who not to pay regardless of promises and commitments made. Their choices to not pay resulted in loss of business for other vendors and that made my blood boil. Yet the owner was sporting a fleet of brand new trucks, vans, and getting cosmetic surgery for his wife while I’m pulling out my hair to make payroll and pay insurance. I made the conscience decision to focus on what I can do and that was to organize, clean up, create budgets, and start saving with strategic planning. That resulted in major vendor accounts being closed and vendors discovering the company was having financial problems. I learned that running a small business is a balance of choices. To be unequally yoked applies to my career too – not just marriage.
Lesson 4 – On my final work day, with all the money problems, I received a stack of checks. One was about $4,000 but it was a double-payment and there were no open invoices to apply it to for this customer. Do I deposit it anyway because we were having $ problems? As I stared at the check, the question came to mind. Who will you obey? That was easy. My Lord! I set the check aside with a note stating “Duplicate” to mail it back or shred. Simultaneously the owner was on the phone having his ass handed to him. He was terminated from his “Presidential” role on a board of directors for not paying a due, which I purposely held because payroll needed to be paid. (Honestly I did not give a bleep!) How could the owner be worried about his public appearance when the company couldn’t make payroll? I learned that I must join a stable company that’s been in business for a minimum of 50 years as they are likely to have stable, wise financial practices like budgeting, saving, and wise financial decision making.
Lesson 5 – At the end of the phone call, the owner came to my desk and requested two checks. I thought that was weird, but I handed them to him. It was about 4:30 PM – almost time to go. 15 minutes later he said he wanted to meet with me with the HR manager present. He started with how he got terminated as president from the board, and looked battered but did not scold or blame me. He was very calm and acknowledged that the situation was flawed beginning with my predecessor who mailed the check to the wrong address weeks ago. We had a professional discussion as to why it was not working out and we both agreed the decision was mutual. (I was miserable and highly stressed out.) We both like each other personally, but professionally we were not a good fit. He even hugged me good-bye and I thought it was sweet. Normally I would have cussed him out. I learned that this experience was good for me to plant spiritual seeds, check my attitude, do better at evaluating, brush up on Excel advanced training, and do not fear at the consequence of staying loyal to Christ.
