5/2/07

Nice Torpedo

I don't normally blog about work - it's just something I like to leave out of my personal site - but I feel compelled to do so after the massive torpedo I just took yesterday.


My boss told me of an opportunity for an Inside Sales position & I had the "interview" yesterday afternoon. Calling it an interview is like saying 2 on 1 is a fair fight. I knew it was shot as soon as the director told me he didn't know I did customer service. That's right, the director - who I would assume should know at the very least what I do at that company - had no earthly idea that I did anything related to customer service.


Oh, here are a few other things I'm lacking:


Not proactive enough. Yeah, he's right. For example, I didn't single-handedly save a major account for another division by stepping in, revamping the order entry & tracking processes. I also didn't take control of the communication issue & improve the customer's confidence.


On that same point I also didn't dedicate excess time to a certain new account that has huge potential growth opportunity. I had nothing to do with a perfect service record that resulted from verballing teams on loads or communicating any & all issues. Not to mention throwing myself into the role of point-of-contact to ensure they were confident in our performance.


I also didn't devise a streamlined process for chain swaps (a big deal in trucking) that would take no less than 250 man-hours out of the process for every six-month chain season. I did explain to the director that this idea - which he called "excellent" & "perfect for our [company's] needs" - was shot down three times: twice by the VP of Ops. He asked who would have shot it down the third time. I looked him right in the eyes & told him he did. Strangely, he didn't seem to believe me (It is the truth).


The fact of the matter is that I'm consistently given the strongest review in my department, am considered the go-to guy (apparently, only within Operations) & step up when I see a potential problem. The issue is that nobody seems to know that other than my boss (& maybe his boss). The above leads me to believe that the company is happy keeping me exactly where I am & will not offer any opportunity for promotion.


In other words, I've realized the worst thing you can be: Irreplaceable instead of Indispensable.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope you've learned a valuable lesson here. if you had just screwed off the whole time you've been there you'd have been promoted several times. Your boss would be like "Hell, I don't want him, let me put in a good word for him and let him be someone else's problem".

Hapkido said...

Yeah, you're not kidding. It was pretty brutal. Basaically, I could have done nothing my entire time there & been just as well off.

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