Delight to Delusion

Divine intersection via LinkedIn, so it seemed. The job title was Trainer - Communication Specialist and the description emphasized teaching, training, video production skills and experience. I found it on the last day they were accepting applications. Short story I got the job. My background was an ideal match for the role at this company, a leading manufacturer of short-run envelope printers tailored for the print industry.

Interviewing with the president of the small company had given me great expectations for this opportunity.  We had a great love for the Catholic faith in common. We knew some of the same people and I got to peruse the small collection of books in his office. Literally the first or second day in a meeting I saw the part of him I came to question. His use of profanity and emotion was not something I was used to.

Admiration for the president, he's still one of the more talented people I've worked with, the small company and the opportunity for me and my family came to an unfortunate end 5 years later.  A new customer about 15 miles from our factory had become irate because they were having problems with their machine. The team member that had done the original install was out of state on another install. The President's emotion for the reaction of the customer caused him to berate this team member, not knowing I was the one that took the support call and was working with the operator of the machine. The operators boss, the owner of the small print shop, had ripped into the VP of sales.

When I found out what was going on behind the scenes I got involved and was told to go visit the customer and diagnose the issue.  I was perturbed but made the trip. Turns out the file they were printing had a formatting issue, a simple basic part of operation not a failure of the machine. It was just part of the operator learning and training process. I was out of there and back to the office within an hour.  It was just another one of those overreactions by our president and the creation of a chaotic situation when we just needed to follow the process. When I entered their print shop I felt treated like an adversary but managed to say have a merry Christmas as I left. The operator I worked with was going to have a little "egg on the face" when they had to explain how quickly I fixed the issue.

Recalling the events of that time my patience should have been better as well. The tipping point was 3 weeks later at a company meeting and the announcement of a company reorganization. It was something that pushed me over the edge and the way I was blindsided. The next day I sent an email and started the process of terminating my employment. I had let the pattern of this chaotic work environment build up. I chose not to meet with the president because I knew he was the master of "smoothing things over" and would probably even offer me more money to stay. The owner has every right to run the company as they see fit.  Success in delivering great products and supporting your customers is the main objective. It's a difficult job keeping all your employees happy but I think when you have to choose a paycheck over respect it creates an environment that I couldn't be a part of. In hindsight it may have been more prudent to confront him directly in private but I really did want him to run the company as he saw fit because the company was successful. The pattern of behavior in the treatment of team members was hard for me to work under. Some lessons are just hard and costly. Gratitude is still in my heart for my tenure and the experience. I didn't like the carrot or the stick and moved on.