Blah… the longer story, and no more interesting than the short version, so essentially a useless w

Knowing that your continued commitment to the job keeps two other people gainfully employed is one thing, but hearing your boss flat out say to you, “It’s up to you right now, and I won’t be upset either way, but you need to tell me if you are wanting to walk away today and find another job, because I need to let the others know we are closing the doors.”

Literally, he said to me they cannot go on without me, and it wasn’t for the drama. I’m in charge of what were 3 separate tasks that there is no one else who can do. Slowly, people have trickled away, and I am the only one left with the knowledge. Where I used to be a “backup” person with the knowledge, “in case” no one else was available, now all the primaries are gone, and I’m it. I don’t like being it.

I was as blunt and as honest as I could be.

– I told him I was worried about Mac mentally. That I’ve only recently been traveling with him, so I have to assume these are new behaviors and not what he’s been like for 7 years or else why is he still working there.
– I told him I was working 3 jobs and getting paid less than I’d like for one.
– I told him this was all his fault for not paying attention to his own business, and that he had a right to know that we’d discussed as much among ourselves for a while now.

– He told me to tell him what I needed to him to do so I wouldn’t just walk away today.

– I told him $10K raise and help. One, preferably two people to be hired, and for him to seriously re-examine Mac’s role in the company.

– He said done. I told him I knew too much about the company to know that he could afford to give me a raise AND hire two people, but he said not to worry, that my checks would always be good.

– He also asked me details about the three jobs I’m doing. The first new hire will take over whichever one I deem is easiest to teach… the pimping graphics work, agent level graphics. The second new hire will take over the next easiest … and here’s where we have our dilemma. Company graphics/ad campaigns is a big, crazy, complicated job, with stupid specs and weird quirks and just a pain in the ass. Me and the guy at FNIS who trained me are the only two people doing this. The guy at FNIS is probably making $100K, is the SOLE remaining worker from the Hawaii office which closed, and gets to work at home from Hawaii, with the nearest coworker or office in Santa Ana, CA.

On the other hand, the other task is support, which is also a big, crazy, complicated job, with stupid specs and stupid customers, and where almost everything ends up having to go through another tier of support at FNIS who thinks we are bottom of the totem pole and may work on our “critical – all customer affecting – major outage” issues when they have nothing better to do, IF they’re already caught up on their web comics, there’s nothing interesting on /b/ and it doesn’t happen to be nice weather outside.

Neither of those jobs is in anyway “easily trainable”, and either one I try to “hand off” will not truly ever be off my shoulders. Boss seems to think the graphics work is again more easily trainable, and that it would be harder to pass on my rapport with the techs in the next tier of support. SO, I guess the answer there is, I’m giving up graphics work if I stay there. Or rather, I’m moving to a management only position for graphics.

BUT, isn’t that what I said. Didn’t I say I was burned out on this shit and wanted doing “graphics” to be about creativity and pleasure and art again. Maybe if I’m not doing that grunt work for a living, and maybe if I get down to ONE reasonable job to manage, then I can find time to find pleasure in that again.

I don’t know. Mostly I feel like a huge sucker for not just telling him to fuck off and close the doors.

Ten weeks. In taking the raise, I promised to devote ten more weeks to seeing if the boss can save this company. If my apparent knowledge can be “passed on”, though the boss did say it wasn’t just the knowledge, it’s my personality they can’t survive without. He said I’m the last big gun they have that impresses people in person, and as long as he can keep me around to wave in front of the customers, he is sure he can keep us open.

Thus, in summary. I am still a dancing monkey for a living… for 10 more weeks at least.