The Counter Offer

This weekend was a complete mental case.

On Friday, my current employer came to me with a counter offer to entice me to stay, and they had done their homework.

The biggest thing for me, its its partly my nature and born of my own self doubt, is I hate sales. I do it to pay the bills. I did my apprenticeship to have a relatively stress free life, but once I got really sick and was pulled out of the field and thrown behind a desk, it became like a rolling stone of situations forming into different situations that has lead to my present position as the Regional Manager of Eastern Australia having to look after building this new business. But in actual fact, I'm just a glorified grease monkey who would prefer to spend all day behind a lathe or elbow deep in a pile of mud fixing stuff.

So my current company came back and not only offered a sizeable payrise, but also agreed to put a sales manager in and have me just look after the operations side of the business, with the caveat that when theres nothing to do in the workshop that I keep doing sales.

Now this is a double edged sword, it appeases my Anti-Sales persona, but its also a stab in the back as I loose my boss status. Realistically thats not a major problem, but it does hurt the ego a bit. But I do see the sense in it, to recruit a suitable candidate in the industry they need to dangle a fancy title in their face.

The other issue I had, is that on Friday on the phone my manager told me the deal was at $X per year, but then by Friday arvo it had come out that the amount he mentioned was wrong and that it was about $12K less. It actually comes in at $1K a year UNDER what the new place offers. So again I get a bad taste in my mouth.

So the problem I have is deciding who I'm going to let down. The new company offers basically unlimited earnings potential, but will mean a lot more stress, a lot more travel away from home and doing a role that I really don't like and probably having to give up my business degree. But it also allows me to use my brain in a field that I'm good at and doing the technical problems that I enjoy.

But then theirs staying with my current employer with Less responsibility, less travel away, more time in workshop and still being able to do my business degree, but slightly less money, a degree of boredom and a base level of annoyance.

I'm currently leaning towards staying with my current employer, more as a means to an end more than anything. It allows for stability, they know my home situations and as much as they annoy me they generally are all good people. The biggest reason of all though is that I will still be able to do my 5mins of work a day with the occasional 10-15min work day thrown in rather than a full 8hrs every day.

But in saying all of this, it could all change again at any minute, I've made up my mind at least 20 different times over the weekend, none of the times I've been completely happy with either option.