notmyrealname

I'm the Purchasing/Sales Manager for a ~$1m/year shop. I've been working there for the last five years. It's a good shop in a nice part of town and when I started it was the bee's knees in my eyes. I work hard, make the business a healthy amount of money and generally will know your name the second time you come in the store. My 33k/year salary, broken down, means I take home ~13$/hour but it's guaranteed money.

There's a shop across town that is nearly as big, only opened five years ago and sounds like a much cooler place to work. They don't need a guy to do the bookings or managing the staff so I'd be making roughly what the entry-level retail guys make.

I graduated high school but never went to university. I fell into bikes more or less accidentally and it turns out I'm kinda good at it. I can talk to people, I have a modicum of business sense and I like riding.

My four choices are as follows. Should I:
1) Stay where I am, buy into the business and call it a career?
2) Jump ship, take a pay cut and have less job stress but more money stress?
3) Move to Kelowna, Halifax, Portland or Montreal and open my own shop? (Job security, be damned!)
4) Skip it all and go back to school to become a nurse or a teacher?

So internet, where do I go from here?

cryptid01

If you think you truly have job security while working for someone else, you're wrong.

notmyrealname

Good point. It's guaranteed for the next few years as the owners don't really like spending a whole lot of time in the store. Beyond that, it's up in the air.

dminor 

That is doubly true today. A long time ago, I chose to eschew the faster track in my field for the slow-and-steady pace of public sector employment at comparatively lower wages for the benefits and defined-benefit pension that awaited at the end. With state & local government budgets getting hammered, even those 'certainties' are up in the air any more.

I would consider 1) and 3) your best choices; but 3) only if you are already very familiar with those towns and are already plugged in to their bike culture in some way. You already know what a tough racket the bike biz is - - multiply that by 4 coming in as an outsider, especially into a smaller market like Kelowna.

joejeweler

Sounds like you have a 3rd option............

Without becoming angry or argumentitive, speak to the boss and present your case much as you have done here. Break it down to the fact that for your work load and resposibilities, a gross hourly of $13.00 is not nearly what your performance should allow. Maybe "leak" out that sometimes you feel you're doing the work of TWO people! (which sounds like you might be, as far as responsibities go)

......knowing that replacing you with an unknown, while at the same time INCREASING his workload to fill in any weaknesses in a new hire,......just might get you what you want. $3 to $5 more/hour seems fair to me, with annual reviews and any raise based on continued responsibilities being performed and reflecting growth in the business. (and that nasty "inflation" thingy!)

Nobody wants to feel under-compensated,.....been there, done that. One of my last and best jobs doing jewelry repair was at a mall where the owner and i agreed to split the repair work reciepts for what i produced.

I worked HARD also,....usually too much actually, but NEVER felt undercompensated. Often 65-70 hour weeks generated $1500 pay weeks, although i was basically an independent contractor and responsible for my own taxes and SS payments.

I did the only "in house" jewelry repair and diamond setting in the mall, we even had a Sears contract for a few years before someone new to management there decided they were supporting a competitor of sorts.

What he forgot was that i would OFTEN size an engagement ring bought at Sears while the customer waited, as couples want to show family and friends their new status RIGHT AWAY!

I even went down 2X a week to pick up their new repairs, and drop off the completed ones,.....and ALL at a discount to our normal pricing. (but we got volume that way) I don't think Sears was being smart in changing the arrangement, not as far as getting the best customer service for their customers. But i still had 80-100 jobs piled up constantly, no matter how long i worked.

.....i did quality work,....andeevn now the store i worked at misses me. The jeweler they use now (not in house) does crappy work and customers complain a lot,.....but they can't find another "me".

A few weeks before christmas i put in some 100 hour weeks,....now THAT's working! (but was fairly conpensated!) Keep in mind no paid holidays or vacation time with an arrangement like that,.....you got paid for what you produced! I kept a weekly log of job number performed and charges to customer. We deducted any part cost before the split,...also.

Worked 8 years there and moved on. At almost 47 then i wanted more of 'Me" time, so worked another 5 years at a 9:00 to 5:00 job where money was way less, but i felt i was living a bit. Still an average 46 hr week though, but compared to 7 day weeks at the mall with just 3 days off a year it was much better. (mall closed on christmas, easter, and thanksgiving)

......working all those long and hard years game me the means to retire a few years ago,....at just 53.

......anyway,...lots more options for you than you may realize,....as you seem like a hard worker also.

notmyrealname

Option 3 listed other towns to where I've already considered moving but opening a shop in any one of them would be thoroughly planned. One of the biggest reasons I don't open a shop where I live is that the market is already saturated. I've really only been to Kelowna once but had such a great time. I could have picked North Bay, Montpelier or Golden, BC.

My wife just walked by an said that she and our newborn son vote for number 1a. She says open a shop in the suburb, where the technical singletrack is. A lack of walk-by traffic and very few bike commuters are both big downsides though.

notmyrealname

The $13/h I make is after tax but is an estimate. I've had the conversation with ownership about financials a number of times. My current contract includes a cost-of-living increase but likely nothing more for the next two or three years.

Wolfvegas

Halifax then we can ride.

Daspydyr 

I had worked for other people my whole life. I became a manager of an insurance office in Las Vegas with the understanding that I would become part owner as certain goals were met. I did my part, the other parts never came through.

I have owned my own "shop" for 5 years. I like working barefooted in shorts most of the time. But before you make a jump, if you do:

Are your relationships with Vendors strong enough that they would stick with you in the event of a move?
Do you have the ability to struggle for a while. When opening anything that requires government permits and licenses, plan on twice as long as seems reasonable. It was 4 months from the time we applied for business licenses before I could legally sell a policy. Regulations Stink! But don't do anything that can get you fined for operating outside the law.

It would be really hard me to go back and answer to someone else's time clock. I bet you like being your own boss. Your current employer made the jump at one time, you can too.

gregf83 

Go back to school and become a nurse. There will always be demand for health care workers. You can pay for your schooling by continuing to work part time at the bike store.

Don't plan on being a teacher as the number of openings continues to shrink.

venturi95

Demand for RNs here in the states is slowly going down. You are working with people of an entirely different universe as a nurse. Most riders are happy, healthy, vibrant individuals. Healthcare should be called Diseasecare. Some of the clients won't ever leave the walls of an institution. That said, there are a lot of options out there besides working in a hospital.