HereForTheBeer: Haha - you may be right. But now I'm sitting at the hotel with a free day. Using it to rest and hope that this sinus infection or whatever it is runs its course. And hey - driving yesterday got me out of shoveling the driveway and sidewalk last night. Unfortunately, it fell on her and she's also under the weather. And taking today off, too.
Sadly, I love this work: the Hero Complex is hard to get past. To stretch things a little, it's like the job equivalent of an RPG: travel to a far away place, customer gives you a quest to solve their problems, you slay the beasts that invaded their machine, and they shower you with praise and gifts (pay the invoice). Return home the victorious hero, regale the wife with stories of the glorious deed, repair the armor and weapons (restock the inventory and buy tools), and mount the trusty steed (Subaru Forester) to journey forth for the next quest.
Emob78: Hey, if it makes ya happy... who am I judge?
I just mention that because I've known career warriors like yourself before, and almost to a man they crashed and burned... sometimes violently and with much pomp and circumstance. Some people don't mind swallowing life and choking on the bone. If you decide that's the life for you... then please, learn some basic Heimlich maneuver techniques. Sometimes life gets stuck in the throat and wants to come back up the hard way.
Judge away! Really, feedback helps. Sometimes it's the outside, unconnected viewpoint that shines the best light on a problem.
If it weren't for the travel and all that comes with it, this would be an ideal job for me. No boss, different workplace all the time, some weekdays at home, talk to a lot of different people... But being away takes a toll. Without kids it's probably not as tough on us as it is for other folks, but there's still a price to pay.
The other downside is that I've convinced myself I need to be available to customers all the time. Much of that has to do with the nature of this industry: a broken machine can be a really big deal to a small shop. That, and I don't want to miss out on a parts sale. Vacation time has taken the brunt of this.
I'm trying to deal with those in two ways. First, I'm expanding my parts lineup. The more stuff I put in my catalog the less I need to travel to earn a living; eventually I'd like to transition to parts-only and offer phone support as a freebie because getting them to call you in the first place - for whatever reason - is a big step to selling parts. The second is that I'm starting to think about the continuation of the business once I decide it's time to slow down or retire. I've built up something here and would hate for it to just disappear at retirement, not to mention figuring out what to do with my parts stock at that time. To that end, I need to find someone worth a shit that I can train on the machines, customer service, and the like. And he or she would have to be willing to travel.
