Weak to weak
I've been working for a small landscaping company for the past three years, (my seventh year in the industry). It's a new company, that started just a few months before I signed on. The owner, has no landscaping experience but has a strong back ground in sales, and running a business. He very rarely ever stayed on any of the jobs we have had over the past few years, and to be honest, I have enjoyed the autonomy to run the crews the way I wanted to.
With the exception of winter, which is always slow, we have done pretty well the first two years. I am a stickler for details, knowledgeable in my field, and am pretty personable with our customers. Repeat business and referrals has kept us hopping and money coming in. My crew chief and I have been compensated well by the owner, and tips we receive from some great customers. We had been adding two new guys each year and were on track to likely hire three, maybe even four this past year, but something happened to prevent that.
Last year, the owner went through a horribly ugly divorce, and was practically a no show for about 6 months. At this time, new customers were having a tough time getting in touch with him and growth seemed to stagnate. Often I came out of pocket to keep the day to day operations going. (He always paid me back every payday. There was never a question about being left hanging.) With no growth, I ran the operations with my crew chief and just a few guys when the jobs called for it. We basically just maintained our contract customers and the occasional hardscaping (stone work), jobs for our existing customers.
Several times over the summer, I had to give the owner, my boss, a pep talk to hang in there and let's start getting a little more proactive. We need to bring in more business to keep things going. With each pep talk, we would get a little pop of new business, but the most consistent labor fell on my crew chief and I. When fall hit, it was only the two of us through September and October. The first week of November my boss had a sit down with us. He was very apologetic for his absence and very appreciative of us picking up the slack and not bailing on him. He gave each of us a raise and asked us to hang in there and we will get through this winter and knock it out of the park this spring when it warms up. In the mean time, it's going to be pretty much just our contract customers. Fair enough. He said the right things, based on the growth we had in the first couple of years, we had no reason to doubt him. We are used to preparing through out the fat months, to compensate for the slow winters. This winter though, has been really difficult. Some of the clean up jobs we have become accustomed to, haven't materialized, and a couple of our long term customers, have ended up dropping us.
Here in the past month, my crew chief and I have had a tough time reaching the owner as well. We were getting texts that read, "Working on something big, stand by". And nothing. About two weeks ago, I ran into a customer of ours whose property we had been maintaining and we owed a leaf clearing, but hadn't gotten the call to come by and do the work. I asked him about it. His response surprised me! Apparently we were just out there a couple weeks ago! So I called my crew chief, and he knew nothing about it. So I try to get in touch with the owner again, and no reply. So I drive down to the shop, and I can see the way the equipment is dirty and not put away properly, gas cans are all empty, that SOMEBODY is working!
I finally caught up with the boss one morning at the shop. I demanded to know what was up and I found out that he has hired two other kids that worked for us earlier, the year before last. He is paying them $8.00 bucks an hour to do our work. From a business stand point, I understand the necessity to do this. Times are slow, and he has to do drastic things in order to maintain the business. Despite that, I was pissed! I completely read him the riot act. Called him every name in the book. I think he thought I was going to go apes**t on him. A part of me wanted to. My crew chief and I, really truly, gave blood, sweat, and stress for this guy. A heads up would have been the least he could have done. Instead he led us on with a raise??? This is dirty, underhanded, back stabbing, betrayal.
This has been the craziest couple of months. I'm not even angry about it now. It is prolonging the bitterness I've been feeling. I'm trying not to allow this to create some deep seeded trust issues. I already have a new job lined up for the end of summer. I need the time off to fix my other house. <Long deep sigh.> It's uncanny. I'm glad I'm running out of people close to me. HAHA. I gave my boss a few days to call our crew chief and talk to him, but he never did, so I called and met with him yesterday afternoon, and had to explain to him what's going on. I felt really bad for him. His financial situation is a little more challenging than mine is. I feel worse for him than I do my own situation.
Oh well, what'cha gonna do? I don't believe in God, so I can't go with He never put's more on you than you can handle. I don't believe in Karma, because I can't see the possibility of how I earned all this. I'm just plugging along waiting to run out of things that can get worse at this point. Life can just get crazy sometimes I suppose.
With the exception of winter, which is always slow, we have done pretty well the first two years. I am a stickler for details, knowledgeable in my field, and am pretty personable with our customers. Repeat business and referrals has kept us hopping and money coming in. My crew chief and I have been compensated well by the owner, and tips we receive from some great customers. We had been adding two new guys each year and were on track to likely hire three, maybe even four this past year, but something happened to prevent that.
Last year, the owner went through a horribly ugly divorce, and was practically a no show for about 6 months. At this time, new customers were having a tough time getting in touch with him and growth seemed to stagnate. Often I came out of pocket to keep the day to day operations going. (He always paid me back every payday. There was never a question about being left hanging.) With no growth, I ran the operations with my crew chief and just a few guys when the jobs called for it. We basically just maintained our contract customers and the occasional hardscaping (stone work), jobs for our existing customers.
Several times over the summer, I had to give the owner, my boss, a pep talk to hang in there and let's start getting a little more proactive. We need to bring in more business to keep things going. With each pep talk, we would get a little pop of new business, but the most consistent labor fell on my crew chief and I. When fall hit, it was only the two of us through September and October. The first week of November my boss had a sit down with us. He was very apologetic for his absence and very appreciative of us picking up the slack and not bailing on him. He gave each of us a raise and asked us to hang in there and we will get through this winter and knock it out of the park this spring when it warms up. In the mean time, it's going to be pretty much just our contract customers. Fair enough. He said the right things, based on the growth we had in the first couple of years, we had no reason to doubt him. We are used to preparing through out the fat months, to compensate for the slow winters. This winter though, has been really difficult. Some of the clean up jobs we have become accustomed to, haven't materialized, and a couple of our long term customers, have ended up dropping us.
Here in the past month, my crew chief and I have had a tough time reaching the owner as well. We were getting texts that read, "Working on something big, stand by". And nothing. About two weeks ago, I ran into a customer of ours whose property we had been maintaining and we owed a leaf clearing, but hadn't gotten the call to come by and do the work. I asked him about it. His response surprised me! Apparently we were just out there a couple weeks ago! So I called my crew chief, and he knew nothing about it. So I try to get in touch with the owner again, and no reply. So I drive down to the shop, and I can see the way the equipment is dirty and not put away properly, gas cans are all empty, that SOMEBODY is working!
I finally caught up with the boss one morning at the shop. I demanded to know what was up and I found out that he has hired two other kids that worked for us earlier, the year before last. He is paying them $8.00 bucks an hour to do our work. From a business stand point, I understand the necessity to do this. Times are slow, and he has to do drastic things in order to maintain the business. Despite that, I was pissed! I completely read him the riot act. Called him every name in the book. I think he thought I was going to go apes**t on him. A part of me wanted to. My crew chief and I, really truly, gave blood, sweat, and stress for this guy. A heads up would have been the least he could have done. Instead he led us on with a raise??? This is dirty, underhanded, back stabbing, betrayal.
This has been the craziest couple of months. I'm not even angry about it now. It is prolonging the bitterness I've been feeling. I'm trying not to allow this to create some deep seeded trust issues. I already have a new job lined up for the end of summer. I need the time off to fix my other house. <Long deep sigh.> It's uncanny. I'm glad I'm running out of people close to me. HAHA. I gave my boss a few days to call our crew chief and talk to him, but he never did, so I called and met with him yesterday afternoon, and had to explain to him what's going on. I felt really bad for him. His financial situation is a little more challenging than mine is. I feel worse for him than I do my own situation.
Oh well, what'cha gonna do? I don't believe in God, so I can't go with He never put's more on you than you can handle. I don't believe in Karma, because I can't see the possibility of how I earned all this. I'm just plugging along waiting to run out of things that can get worse at this point. Life can just get crazy sometimes I suppose.
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