A Major Decision in the Next Couple of Weeks

Luckily, I happen to be a constant planner. Especially when it comes to money. Because in the coming weeks I will have some very important decisions I will need to make.

For the past several months I have been rolling the idea around in my head to consider semi-retirement. The thing is that while I am still quite young—a mere 48 years old—I have also worked very hard over the years to achieve certain financial goals for myself. And I did most or all of that in order to have one thing available to me.

The freedom to choose what I want to do. Not what I am forced to do.

I will spare you the details about exactly what the above means. I plan to be on here a long time, and I will have plenty of time in the future to share my ideas about building wealth, and all of the benefits one can realize from doing that.

This article is more about the current prompt which is making me have to evaluate this idea a bit more closely in the coming weeks.

My current job has me in a sales position. It is both an inside sales job and an outside sales job. What customers I maintain are mine, and I earn a commission from every sale I make to those customers. This is, and has been my primary responsibility since my very first day on the job with the company that I work for. It is not a job that is particularly physically demanding, and while the company offers virtually no benefits whatsoever, it is one that happens to pay very well between the base salary I earn and the commissions that I receive from my sales.

So, all in all, it's not a bad gig, so to speak.

But off an on there has been an additional responsibility placed on me and my co-workers (the others salesmen in the office). Over the course of about a two-year span, the decision was made that when we lost our warehouse worker that we would not replace him. Instead, we would do the warehouse work ourselves.

This new task came with no additional benefits. Our base salary was not increased to compensate us for the extra work and for the time that these duties would take away from our ability to stay on the phones, filling orders, and taking care of our customer bases. And we were not offered bonuses either.

At some point we did actually see a drop in overall revenue for our branch. Let's face it, when you have less time to actually sell, you are not going to bring in as much money for the company. And of course, less sales for the branch means that each salesman is selling less—and so the cycle goes that you also realize at some point that you are making less money in commissions as well.

When your commissions outweigh your base salary and they are reduced, this presents a big problem. More work and less money is never something that generally produces a desirable result for anyone involved.

We did finally make the decision to hire on a warehouse worker so that we could go back to focusing on what we were actually hired to do.

Sell things and move our products.

That warehouse worker, who has been on the job for about a year, has decided to move on, and offered his two weeks notice to us. And at least for the moment it is not entirely clear what the course of action is going to be.

One factor here is that we are getting close to the end of our summer, and summers are our busiest time of the year. While there is still plenty of work to to do in the slower months, it is entirely possible that the company may decide to wait until we enter the next busy season before they hire someone to replace our current warehouse guy who is leaving.

That decision could potentially find us (the salesmen) back in the warehouse for the next eight months.

There was a time in my younger days when I would not have necessarily cared one way or the other what decision would be made in this regard. In my work life I mostly had the attitude that sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. Even if it is not ideal. Even if you don't necessarily like it.

But times are a bit different for me now. Somewhere along the line, at my young 48, I was gifted with back issues that are chronic. I have degenerating disks in my back, and as a result of the lack of cartilage, have also developed arthritis.

This does not make me crippled. It simply makes physical labor much more difficult than it was before this medical condition became an issue for me.

So yes. I have a decision to make in the next couple of weeks. And it will be largely dependent upon what my company decides is their next course of action.

What do I need to see? I need to see an ad go up immediately to replace our current warehouse guy. I can deal with the warehouse issue on a temporary basis, and am willing to commit to that. But I can only commit to this provided I see a clear cut plan as to what the company's intentions are.

Not only do I need to see the plans. I also need to see action.

So, ultimately, the decision that I need to make in the next couple of weeks is do I stay with the company depending on how they wish to proceed following the departure of our warehouse worker, or do I initiate the "plan" that has been in place for several months to decide to semi-retire and leave my current place of employment?

I am not certain what the outcome will be. As they say, everything is up in the air. But regardless of what I ultimately decide, at least I can have the comfort of knowing that I am fully aware of how to deal with whatever decision is made.

Lead image by Porwest.