Monday, June 10th. Turned in my resignation from my parents company, effective July 31st, 2002.
Monday, June 24th. Had a meeting with my father, President and 49% owner of the family business (Stepmom owns the other 51%). In this meeting, the following agreement was made:
If I were to stay an extra month to train my replacement (through the end of August), then I would recieve 3 months severance pay + benefits, lasting through the end of November.
This is (unfortunately, as things turned out) an oral agreement. (Kiddies! Watch and learn from your elders’ mistakes!)
Monday, August 5th. My replacement finally arrives, only to be shipped off for a couple of days to take some basic computer classes at the local Computer Learning School Inc.
Friday, August 30th. Last day of work!! Whoo-hoo!! And with three months severance + bennies!!!
Uh…
At 3:50 pm, I was called into the Controllers office (our main financial guy) to be informed of the following sequence of events:
- My stepmother claims that my father has no authority to enter the company into any agreements that she hasn’t cleared, and that I should have been aware of this (“I told him 5 times!”) when I made the June 24th agreement.
- My father, upon hearing this pronouncement and being questioned by the controller as to whether or not this was true, didn’t demurr and “kinda made some sort of assenting gesture, but didn’t say anything.” (According to the controller).
- Therefore, there was no agreement between me and the company because the President and 49% owner of the company had no right to enter the company into any agreement whatsoever.
I then told the controller that as far as I was concerned, there was an agreement and as far as I was concerned, while the enforcability of an oral agreement might be hard to prove, I was not going to be in breech of it and planned on finishing my last hour of work. Then I went to my office and got back to work.
My parents were not in the building, having left it 10 minutes before the meeting (I saw them driving away). The cowards.
At 4:00, I was called back into the controllers office and offered the following “compromise”:
- I was to be paid in a lump sum at the end of the day, not over time ala paychecks.
- There will be no benefits involved, if I want health care I gotta go COBRA.
- To receive the above, I had to sign a non-compete.
I asked the controller if either one of the “solutions” was in accordance with what he, my father, and I discussed in a meeting earlier in the week, or in their meeting Thursday, August 29th. He claimed that they were not. I then noted that as he did admit that they have adjusted the agreement twice without consulting with me, then they were in obvious breech of contract and that I didn’t need to stay at work, especially as I had completed 159.25 out of 160 hours of my agreement.
The atmosphere wasn’t as calm as described above, but the details are accurate. There was no swearing, yelling or whatever, but it was quite obvious that I was furious.
Total amount of package that I’m now not getting: $18,000.
I then had to go in the back of the office and tell my wife (who was employed there as well) what had happened. SHE got emotional and yelled and etc, which was fine as far as I’m concerned - as long as I kept my cool. She gathered up the baby and her things (she brings, … brought, the baby to work with her everyday - Sophie is, … was quite popular at the office) and went to her car. A number of people followed her, where she let them know what was going on.
I was gathering the last few things from my office and telling my co-workers goodbye. It was my last day after all.
Sunday, September 1st. I make calls to my relatives, telling them that I am severing the relationship between me and my father, and that it would be appreciated if they could just drop us from any family-wide plans that will involve him and/or his wife. I made it explicitly clear that they are never to see Sophia again unless this issue is resolved to my satisfaction, and that even if it were they should expect relations between me and my stepmother to be icy at best.
Tuesday, September 3rd. I file a Business Charter (C-Corporation) with the State of Tennessee for my new company, Distribution Solutions Inc., fill out an application for a Federal Employee Identfication Number, wrote a few checks, and got the process going on starting my new business.
Wednesday, September 4th. My family and I take off for a week in New York to take the baby to visit relatives who haven’t seen her in person (and they are too old to make the trip to K’ville, so it was really up to us to take the baby to them). The trip has been planned for months and I see no reason to cancel it just because my parents robbed my family of $18,000.
The baby is wonderful. We drove 14 hours and she complained 5 minutes. 
Friday, September 6th. I have an interview with a Sr. VP of some company in Manhattan for a position that pays in the 6-figures (the job will be in Atlanta). It goes splendidly, with him saying that as soon as they get the go-ahead on the Atlanta contract that he will give me a call to head up that division.
Sweeeet. Only fly in the ointment is that I will not likely be able to start working until next June. Not so sweet. My wife and I have assets, but we don’t want to burn through an appreciable percentage of them waiting to start work. But as the income is more than twice what I was making at Pop’s, we could probably squeeze by. Plus, the missus and I love Atlanta which adds to the attractiveness of the offer.*
Btw, I LOVE driving in Manhattan. Not as fun as downtown Boston, but still it is enjoyably aggressive.
Saturday, September 7th. A big party is thrown for us 
, everbody gets to see the baby , I’m forced to watch the US Opens womens final 
, Miami wallops Florida . All in all a good day, and the social side of the vacation is finished.
Monday, September 9th. Met with Company X in Buffalo, NY to give a software demonstration and a sales pitch for DSI.** My first sales pitch for my own company! Was I nervous? Not really, believe it or not. I knew that I was going to offer them an irresistable service and I was correct: We agreed in principle to a 4-year contract worth $500,000. Might not be that big, but the profit margins are of the size that it makes the job offer far less attractive, especially as there are other, bigger, fish to land. After the meeting, we went to Niagra Falls and then drove all the way back to K’ville, arriving at 3:00am. Baby was wonderful again.
Tuesday, September 10th. The first day of the rest of my life. Going to write a couple of thank-you notes (NOT emails!) to the people I visited up in NY and then start to work, working for myself.
Funny how life works, huh?
*The interview was scheduled before I decided to start my own business, and I felt that I should still follow through for a number of reasons which should be apparent.
** I developed the software during the Labor Day weekend. My damned laptop crashed on the trip up, but if you think that I’m stupid enough to not back up ALL my latest data to CD, then you think I’m stupid indeed. I let them know what happened on Thursday the 5th and asked them if it would be OK to set it up on one of their desktops. No problem.