Lucky 13

Today marked the conclusion of the 13th year of employment with my company. While it was certainly rocky at times, it turned out to be a lucky year, rather than unlucky, as I thought it might be for awhile there.

A year ago, I'd wrapped up my 12th year with the same company, with the same customer, and things were looking better than ever in terms of our workload and the outlook for our product. Sure, we were nearing the end of our contract, but we had high hopes yet another contract victory, and of being able to keep on doing what we'd been doing for years (and very well I might add... 10/10 customer ratings year over year). Then the worse possible thing happened. We lost our contract for, in my opinion, purely politically-correct reasons. After all, the customer loved us, and wanted to continue to give us a fair and open opportunity to compete for the work we'd done for years. But the bean counters were requiring nearly every contract at that time to be awarded to a small business, meaning our company couldn't compete directly for our own work, simply so the government could meet a quota. That stance ended an era of twenty-four years of continuous service (in various capacities) to that customer by our company. Sure, I was given the opportunity to go work for the winning company, a small business. But my company had been pretty good to me over the years, and I felt that I should stay the course, even through uncertain times.

For four months I worked at the corporate office, doing various projects, but with increasing concern as time passed. After all, I was burning overhead, not generating it. Surely it was only a matter of time before I corroded the bottom out of the bottom line, leaving them no choice but to cut me loose in a proverbial needs-of-the-many-outweigh-the-needs-of-the-one scenario. But just when I was most worried, a new contract opportunity had come to light, and subsequently worked out in my favor, thank goodness. As such, for the last five and a half months, I've been enjoying new (work) life, and have even already traveled twice, with at least another year or two before having to worry about a contract again.

Last year I expected to be doing something entirely different right about now (or, as it were, the same thing I was doing last year). Six months ago I thought I may be on the street by now. Turns out I was wrong on both counts. And who knew it would be so fortuitous to have been wrong about such an important aspect of my life.

What can I say. I'm just lucky to (still) be here.


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I get a lot of questions about what my company does. I never have a particularly good answer, aside from the official response. Well, the company has recently started making TV and radio commercials, something we hadn't traditionally done in our forty years of existence. Maybe the commercial will serve as a better answer, so thought I'd share that today, considering the occasion.