exercise compassion: Airing Dirty Laundry...Or Why I Quit My Job

The Airing of Dirty Laundry…OR Why I quit my job

There comes a time when you must realize the odds are against you and preparation is needed to remove your self from the situation. I have worked with the same people for 6 years and a few of these people still have no idea what they are doing at their job. One person in particular noticed I was more productive and understood what I was doing better than he was. This made him angry, jealous, both or some other emotion but for whatever reason he went from friend to no longer speaking to me. In the order of production I was the next in line after him which gave him an upper hand in making me work harder. I began to receive orders cut the wrong size, cut of the wrong species, or not receive orders at all or receive them just as I was to go to lunch or leaving work for the day. I spent many hours of overtime catching up on his mistakes and often redoing his job without anyone noticing.

So finally I was tired, tired of doing someone else's job without notice, tired of someone else getting the pat on the back, just tired of the drama.

The following videos at salt to the wounds and caused me to become even more frustrated with my current job.

So here is how it all came to an end.

Wednesday Barry came to me about the strainers for the Taryn Simon order being cut wrong. They were cut out of 2' stock and should have been 3" stock. I told him I would rush to join new ones as long as the person who cut them out of the wrong stock helped to join them. I explained I was tired of repairing someone else's mistakes. He asked what other mistakes he made and it so happened that I was joining a round over cherry frame that was for him and Danny had milled the round over in one pass therefore it was chipped out. Travis re milled the rail that was bad and I joined it without anyone knowing it had to be re milled. Barry said that was only fair that others would have to help join the strainers. Danny cuts 5 of 14 strainers and was to mill stock to make two more strainers for a total of 7. Danny left at noon for lunch with only 5 strainers cut and no material milled. After Jeff and I worked through our lunch break to join the strainers I went to Barry to tell him I quit. He gave me a song and dance that he wasn't aware of the issues and he promised he would make it better by watching over Danny closer… I told him it hasn't changed in the 6 months since Danny walked out and you asked for him to come back so I don't feel it will change now. Barry said to give him two days and he would call me. I said I would wait for him to call me the following weekend and he said I will call you Friday.

Friday, no phone call. Sunday he emails me and I call him back. He tells me he had to make a tough decision but he has asked Danny to stay. This makes no sense to me because I told him repeatedly that I did not want to see Danny lose his job, that I once liked working with Danny. He tells me Danny doesn't have the opportunities that I have and it would be more difficult for him to find a job. Again this confuses me as I quit the previous Wednesday, not to mention Danny has a second job working for a former employee that took a lot of clients from Barry's shop. I said OK and then he back tracks and tells me he isn't firing me. He also asks if he may call on me when a difficult situation arises and I may be able to solve it. I explain to him I would hope I would be working for someone else by then and it would be very awkward.

So I suggest all three of us (Danny, Barry and myself get together about this and talk it over. He says that would be a great idea and we should get together Tuesday (today) at 6 at a location away from the shop. I agree and ask him to email me when he determines a place. He has yet to email me and I doubt he will.

Six O'Clock Tuesday came around and I never heard from Barry. This enraged me due to the fact that I drove back to New York from North Carolina just to meet and to top it off it was my grandfather's 95th birthday.

I feel Danny's attitude will change drastically without me there. I have no idea what created the negativity he presented towards me, but he began treating me like absolute shit. He has thrown things at me several times, spit towards me, and has called me racist names for years. During the hurricane Sandy aftermath I knocked on his van window to ask him if he knew anything about when the power may come on. He wouldn't even roll his window down. Strange. I have heard three different reasons as to why he stopped talking to me. First, I was told by Brian at Artisan that he didn't like that I don't pay taxes. Later Brian told me it was because he felt I didn't care about my job at Baobab and my lifestyle interfered with my work. I was also told my Moon that he didn't like that Moon and I had become friends. Moon actually hated Danny.

Now for the dirty secrets I know about Danny. Danny works for Clint at Downing Frames, a competing frame shop owned by a former employee of Barry's, and helped him to open his shop and has worked there in the afternoons and weekends ever since it opened. When Clint was opening his shop and Will was preparing to leave Baobab to work at Downing, Danny gave Will his shop key for two weeks. I have no idea what Will was doing with the key in that time but it's suspicious.

Oh well, I'm relieved to be out of there, but very stressed about finding a job. I'm sending out over 15 resumes a day and zero responses.

Festool Router as a Circular Saw