lonecity.com

If you’re unfortunate enough to have been following my blog, you would know that my financial situation has been slowly declining to the point of desparity.  I spent some time looking at taking night school classes thinking if I did a bit of schooling I might be able to get excited about going to work more.  The fact is that there is little hope of supporting myself and my family with Just one 40 hour a week job. 

I’ve owned a small CNC milling machine for years.  I bought it thinking I could use it to make printed circuit boards.  I don’t really know whether the problem with my home business idea was my lack of skill, the machines lack of capability, or a combination of both.  It definatly wasn’t well thought through.  At first I thought it was me, but as I’ve spent some time learning I think the machine may be more to blame than I initially thought.  Regardless it failed.  I did catch the bug and interest in CNC machining.  The G code was almost second nature to me, given my computer programming skills.  My thought was to take a few night school courses to bring my mechanical knowledge up to par with my computer knowledge.  Then I was going to try to get an entry level job loading CNC machines.  Mostly I figured if I got into doing something I had an interest in I might be able to tolerate having to work a second job.

I also took some time these last few weeks looking at job postings both online and locally.  I haven’t put any applications in as of yet though.  As much as I hate to admit it, I really do well at my current job.  I won’t say I like it, since I hate work in general.  They pay me better than anyone with my no college background and I’m near the non-management payroll cap.   I’d feel bad asking for a raise, since I’m already so far above the curve.  (I easily make 30% more than most of my coworkers.)

Anyhow, I’ve tried not to give any indication that I might be looking for other employment to my bosses.  However it seems the dread thats been painted on my face of late must have been obvious.  A few weeks ago I came up with a temporary solution to keep me afloat financially.  By working longer shifts and commuting less I can save 20% on travel costs.  I worked out the new schedule with my boss and even though I didn’t tell him this I figured that would make one more day I could work somewhere else should things get too dire.  Anyhow come last friday he called me into the office and offered me a small raise.  (I didn’t ask)

I guess the raise is probably enough to cover the rising cost of gasoline for another year.  Couple that with the savings by working one less day a week and I can probably maintain my current path for a while longer.  I can see that they’re really trying to keep me so its hard to want to go elsewhere.  The problem there is that I see things exactly the way the business sees things.  If one of our locations is losing money we’re better off closing it than keeping the doors open.  If someone isn’t working hard enough we are better off replacing them than trying to convice them to work harder.  Well even though I can see they want to keep me what it comes down to is that I simply will be better off financially if I find other employment closer to home. 

They really want me to stay, and they aren’t underpaying me.  It just isn’t economical for me not to be looking for something better.  So now even though I don’t want to quit, and they don’t want me to quit I need to.  I just have to feel like an ass when I’m looking for a new job.  Somehow I think I would be better off feeling under appreciated.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS