>Clearly I misunderstood your intent in your first msg. My apologies for
>offending, it wasn't my intent to do so.

I know you were intending to be comforting, and I do appreciate that and
thank you for caring.

It stung to see how little credence you gave me, but I do realise your
intentions were loving.

Perhaps you got the idea that I don't know the basics because Crosstown,
Phoenix, and now Moir & Moir closed down.

Rest assured none of those were caused by my not knowing how to run a
business.

The plug was pulled on Crosstown by our investors who got greedy and thought
they'd get more of the profit if they got rid of Rob and me. If I hadn't
been running the office so well, we would not have been increasing our
profits much more quickly than forecast, and they wouldn't have come to the
conclusion they had a goldmine that Rob and I were hiding from them.

Phoenix was killed because the government changed the rules on
telecommunications, and our international clients, touchy after having
experienced what happened to telecommunications in the US when AT&T was
broken up,  pulled out to wait and see what happened to Canadian
telecommunications, leaving us without sufficient means of support to pay
ourselves or our cost of doing business. Despite the fact that we'd seen
this coming (it did need to be done) and had made preparations, we were
unable to support ourselves on thin air for long enough to ride out the
disruption in the industry, and both had to look for work in order to pay
our bills. That I do know how to adminisrate, and do it well, is shown in a)
Rob and I were able to rise from our own ashes after Crosstown and set up
shop immediately, with clients and suppliers who had known us from
Crosstown, not to mention staff and b) we had seen the problems coming,
prepared for them, and made the dissolution of Crosstown, and later of
Phoenix, much less traumatic than it could have been (in that we weren't
taken unawares)

With Moir & Moir, not only was I a good enough office manager to prevent the
arrangement from blowing apart in the first six months, I had plans in place
for the dissolution when it happened (even though the precise manner and
timing of the explosion took me by surprise) to the point that even though I
was laid off March 31, I have been asked if they can employ my "wisdom and
experience" (their words) as an independant consultant to help them
restructure, and to that effect have been working with Don and Stuart
through April, and will continue to do so.

My skills as an employer and an employee are such that Stuart will pay me to
train his new assistant, when the time comes, and in the meantime is paying
me to teach him. How often is an employee who has been laid off paid to
teach her ex-boss? Believe me when I say I'm well aware of my abilities and
do not underestimate myself!!

>You have my continued good wishes and prayers that the new job goes well...
>the rest can be tossed in the bit bucket as mileage that definitely varied.
>
Thanks for your good wishes. One of the tricky things ahead of me is that
Remote Law (who is technically who hired me to do the work BC Online wants
done) is buying out other companies in order to have a client base to start
with. They're keeping the staff of these companies in order that they can
continue to tend to their clients. It's my task to integrate the staff of
the purchased companies into our set up. This includes a woman who taught me
how to use a conveyancing programme. She taught me to use the programme, now
(at present unknown to her) she'll be working for me. That little bit of
diplomacy is going to make *full* use of my skills!!
>
You've been on the other side when you're working for a company, going along
believing you're keeping your company afloat, and suddenly there's a meeting
where you find out that the company has been sold out from under you, you
work for someone else without warning or your consent, and you don't believe
any of the stories you're told. Then you meet your new supervisor, and you
wait to find out how many of the stories you have been told are lies. I've
been there, too.

Well, I'm going to be that new supervisor in a few months when the deal has
gone through, and Fran is going to find out the new supervisor is someone
who doesn't know anything like as much as she does about what she's doing,
because she gave me about a one hour orientation about two years ago. *This*
is a perfect example of why they *must not* put in writing that I'm an
expert in things that I'm not expert in. Do you know how much it would
undermine the new people coming on board if I were sold to them as an expert
and Fran who is an expert knows how little I know about it? Trust me, I mean
what I say when I use words like "oversold"
>
> >So Earl and I went about our job as we knew how,
>> >did the best with the tools available, kept people
>> >informed if it would take us time to figure it out or whatever, and in
>the course of doing all that we found out they appreciated us *more*
because
>> >they could trust us with what we knew *and* what we didn't know! You
>would be astonished how rare that is...
>
This is the best I can hope for from the people who will be answering to me
in the near future.
I know from long experience how hard it is to find people with a code of
ethics like that, even when they aren't landed in my lap not of their
volition. Given the fear and resentment that comes from working for a
company that is purchased and finding themselves as part of the purchase
like so many cattle on a farm, not to mention that word that their new
supervisor knows a lot less than they do is bound to spread like SARS, can
you imagine how tricky it's going to be for me to make them all happy and
productive? Producing a good working atmosphere, and good morale, is one of
the things I'm good at. It has to do with listening, responding honestly,
making what changes I can make, and honestly caring about their feelings,
all while not letting people take advantage (resentment is one of those
things that shifts targets - you're really upset with the previous boss who
did this to you behind your back, but you feel angry with the new boss you
didn't expect to have).
Whether I do my job well or not will be measured by whether or not Fran
quits and finds another job, and how many of her staff go with her. Even if
I do my job well, I might not be able to prevent that. Trouble with those of
us who grew up in a free society where we believe we have the right to
choose - we get very indignant about being moved about like chattel.
>
If you could tell me some of the things that irked you the most about being
shoved into a new company when the one you were working for was sold, it
would help me to avoid making the same mistakes with the people in the
companies we're aquiring. What I resented the most when I was in that
situation, was the feeling that I was no longer a person, but just a piece
of office furniture that had been bought and sold with the place.
>
Laurie huge challenges ahead Phoenix

--- Rachel's Little NET2FIDO Gate v 0.9.9.8 Alpha