Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions (Part 1 of 3)

 

It had been about two weeks now since a friend told me about a new management opportunity opening up.

 

He knew that I had become increasingly unhappy in my present job, but the pay was good and it was only a twenty minute drive from our home. Unfortunately I was working for a store manager who made it increasingly difficult to enjoy my chosen profession. Up to this point I had enjoyed retailing, starting out as a manager trainee in a large department store and quickly working my up to my present position of sales manager. I was now in “big box” mass merchandising.

 

When I worked in a department store there was the grace of personable service and personalized selling.  Now there is a new breed of retailers—greedy, ambitious and obsessed with giving the multitudes what they want: more and more cheap stuff, easily disposed of and easily replaced with more stuff. Whoever came up with the phrase, ‘The end of one sale is the beginning of the next’, wasn’t kidding around. That’s all there was! Price had become everything and quality was… well… Fortunately for me, not everyone was in favour of a price-only approach to retailing– at least not yet.

 

Of course, with the staff caught in the middle, I knew my philosophical clash with my manager could not last. Something had to give; but was this new job opportunity ‘it?’  

 

The prospect of the new retailing job was not without its problems. For one thing, it meant moving to Toronto – some 2 hours away. It was for an Assistant Manager position; a step up, but for a vastly smaller enterprise and initially for less money. However, it held out the prospect that I could someday work my way up to an excellent position as a Store Manager – great paycheque and full participation in a company profit plan. Before that could happen, I had to commit to working 12 hour days, 6 days a week.

 

The big question: Did I dislike my present job bad enough to go from working 37.5 hours a week to unlimited hours a week? Did I have any choice?

 

That’s how I found myself at the park where we had played as kids… to clear my mind… to resolve my dilemma. It was a big park with public swimming pool, swing sets and acres of grassland for walking trails and biking paths. The park itself was nestled against a gently flowing river that meandered around the southern edge of the river banks which were graced by century-old willows trees whose branches gave in to the soft, warm, gentle breezes of a sunny afternoon.

  

This day found me looking down at the swirling waters, a foot or so beneath my feet, at the midpoint of a narrow footbridge. The bridge was built to provide safety for children, as it traversed the river at a narrow point, where the river’s normally placid state actually picked up speed to form rapids.

 

With the precision of a core of army engineers, what the city had done was create this 100 foot pontoon bridge, using scores of empty oil drums. It was as practical as it was ingenious – using board planking atop these brightly painted drums, with enough room for two people to walk side by side. It was ribboned on both sides with simple stout steel cabling to grab hold of.

 

Where normally there would be lots of people enjoying the park, I was the lone solitary figure, as far as I could see. Seemingly left alone with my thoughts, my restless mood seemed in stark contrast to the summer calmness all around me. I wondered how things (and life in general) could have gotten so complicated.

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When I discussed this with my wife, she simply had said that since it was my career decision it was up to me. You would have thought that would have relieved the pressure I felt. It didn’t.  And, although it meant leaving family if we moved, she would trust my judgment for both of us (actually for three of us as we were expecting our first child in just days.) So, if there was to be a decision, it had better be soon. 

 

I never had this problem as a kid. In those days, if we wanted to do something, we would just do it, oblivious to the consequences. Like the times we would scale the pool fence at night, and take a free swim, undetected in the darkness. Or when we would build our homemade rafts and take to crossing the rapids. Life seemed so carefree then.

 

Praying? Yeah, I tried it before… why not? When I was young, I remember talking (is that the same as praying?) to God all the time. As the only child of a divorced couple, I was by myself a lot and until I grew up there was no one to tell me how weird that was. As I thought of it further, I didn’t even know how to begin… stumbling through the Lord’s Prayer, I managed to mix it up with the 23^rd Psalm – something I had memorized at Sunday school.

 

Losing hope and feeling more perplexed than ever, I threw the stick I had been holding into the water, just for something to do. I watched it drift further away from me; it picked up speed as it skimmed the surface of the rapids. It was then that I noticed, for the first time, the tiny island just a minute downstream, where the rapid waters swept by each side. Just as swiftly I devised a solution to my predicament! I decided that if that stick went to the right of the island, we would stay; if it went left… we would go. 

 

It wasn’t scientific, but I was feeling desperately inspired. So, you couldn’t believe my surprise as the stick neither passed the island to the right or the left, but got stuck on the island itself!

 

Stuck right in the middle, I thought, what the hell! Now what?

Prophetically, although I didn’t know it at the time, that turned out to be my one escape route, relieving me from all my burdens. But that’s another story, and I don’t know if I’m the one to tell it.  Decisions, decisions, decisions. (Please see part 2 and 3)

 

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