My struggle with this is the uncertainty of when/if I will get a Water Treatment job back in Ontario. If I decide to take the job at the dealership, I feel like I have given up. Also Water Treatment gives me a sense of pride, as everyone/everything needs potable water and always will.
Even though I would be great at my job at the heavy equipment dealership, Im questioning if I would have the same satisfaction of doing a good job...:banghead:
My family is very important to me and I want to see them asap, but there is always the uncertainty with the big corporations...:banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead:
Steve, I'll share some things from my past that might help, might not.
When I got out of trade school I went to work at the local Chevy garage detailing cars in the body shop. I went to school to learn how to do collision work. After a few months there I was starting to get a little frustrated in that all I was doing was washing cars. I wanted to do more, but the boss wouldn't let me.
One of the local factories was looking for someone in making dies. I applied and got the job. I put in my two weeks notice at the at the Chevy garage.
My first day at the factory they put me in the basement with very little lighting. I couldn't stand it. I'm one of those guys who has to see sunlight. The next day I went in and called HR to tell them I was quitting. There was a frenzy to keep me. The person I replaced was on the job for six months and couldn't understand it. I was on the job for one day and picked it up immediately. It wasn't rocket science and fairly easy to do, but because the dies were used for stamping the cardboard into boxes it was an important job to the operation of the plant.
HR called me thirty minutes later and offered me a dollar more an hour. No dice. The plant supervisor came to the basement to see me and offered me two more dollars an hour above what HR offered me. Still no dice. Eventually the plant owner came around and offered me $20 an hour. Hard to turn down, but I did.
I went back to working at the Chevy garage the next day. At $6.50 an hour. And with a new attitude.
I did what was I asked to do with a zeal. The manager started giving me more and more work along the lines of body work. Warranty work and the such that allowed the flat rate guys to stay on the money making jobs. I loved it.
Ten years later I was pulling frames at the local Ford garage, making almost as much as if I'd stayed at the plant if I'd taken the plant owner's offer. My skills expanded exponentially in that ten years. Skills that are in demand.
That $6.50 an hour set up my future. I've owned two small business in the past 20+ years of saying no to the plant. I've done everything professionally to a car except drive 'em and sell 'em. And gained a lot more job .
When Sarah and I first got married she was still considered a new grad with only a year's worth of experience in her chosen field. Most folks want more experience than that. The only jobs she could find was for a traveling therapy company. She went to Maine for six months. She was in Boston for six weeks. She was in Buffalo for two years, coming home only on the weekends. She got a contract that was two hours away that moved her all over the place in the area. She put a 1000 miles a week on the car.
Then she landed the job at the psyche center. We moved to put her a mile from work. The paycheck was nice, but it was the bennies she was after. Those benefits are still in effect for
me in that she was able to leave me enough in that it set up
my future, too.
Of course, all this was unforeseen when it was taking place. It's truly God's Hands in the mix. I truly believe that one of the reasons I was able to open my own place was so I could shut the doors and take care of her last summer and sit by her bed for the month she in a coma. It gave me a secured place to go back to when I was ready to go back to work. I wouldn't have had that working for someone else. I wouldn't have been able to open my own place if I had stayed at the plant.
If it weren't for all the traveling she wouldn't have had the necessary skills and experience to work at the psyche center. With that job came a caring group of co-workers who rallied around her last summer. When she was displaying the psychological symptoms of the tumor it was her co-workers at the center who pushed her to get checked out so she could keep her job. Her former boss would have just fired her.
With the job at the psyche center also came the fact that I walked away from over a half million dollars of medical bills with only around $68 spent out of pocket. What she was able to leave me was enough that I could buy a house and get some things in order, financially, in my life without her. It jump started my future.
But beyond that, going back to the day I met her, I know God's Plan for those thirteen years of our lives. She was the only woman who could be in my life, helping me to grow to be a man (I was 29 when we got married. I look at our wedding photos and see nothing more than a boy). I met a girl at 22 years old and watched her grow into a decisive, mature woman at the age of 35. I had as much to do with that as she did with me being a man. God placed each of us into the other's lives because we
had to be together. When it came to making the decision to let her go, so she could go Home, I truly believe I was placed in her life for just that reason. I was the only person in the world her knew her well enough to know when she made the decision for herself, unable to speak, unable to move, and have the courage - the love - to know when she said goodbye - to voice that decision for her. Believe it or not, I think that all that time apart made us closer in that when she came home, it was about
us, not anyone else.
Only a few people know this, but I believe that God lead me here, too. The benefit auction the folks had for us last summer? That money allowed me to live at her bed side last year. It allowed me to live a month, essentially homeless, to hold her hand even after her heart stopped beating.
And a lot of it started with the decision to walk away from a good paying job when I was a kid. A decision motivated by God. I truly believe that. I walked into that plant on the second day and the light bulb went off in my head that I wasn't supposed to be there. I was supposed to be in the body shop.
Steve, I'm not saying that your experiences for the future will be like mine (God, I pray not!). What I'm saying is that whatever decision you make, know that there's a reason for that decision. There's a Plan in place for you, Lori, your dad. Whatever decision you make, make it prayer, and make it in love. I wish the best, my friend, but take comfort in the idea that you're Loved.
