Eight years of working for the same company resulted in a stalled job and salary with no room to grow. For the last two years my compensation and responsibilities had remained static. When asking for raises I was told that the company could not afford an increase. This forced me to look elsewhere for suitable employement. When I let my manager know that I had a better offer with room to grow he asked me how much more it was going to take to keep me there. That just cemented my decision to leave and I gave him my resignation and two weeks notice the same day.

A few weeks later I started at Klockner Bartelt Machine Company. My new job had better pay, better benifits, and most importantly, room to grow. Initial responsibilities where to be an expediter.

I had done a short stint at Oshkosh as an expediter when a fork lift driver decided to drive in a foot traffic only zone and ran over my foot. I thought I had some inkling as to what was expected of me. Well was I in for a surprise....Klockner had reorganized a few months prior. At the same time it was decided that the existing machine shop (One of the largest in Southwest Florida) would be disbanded in favor of outsourcing, AND, by the way, we are changing computer systems with no possible access to the old system as well. Wow! Our small team of three worked till 9:00 PM some nights and we were still losing ground by the day! Take into account that the new computer system went down daily, and each time it did inventory was reset, all purchase orders were deleted, and all production bills and routing were lost and you can guess at the confusion. I really enjoyed the challenge! Within a month I was thee go to guy for what was on order, where it was coming from, when it came in, where it is now, and the daily "I need this!"

Six months from being hired I was promoted to Junior Buyer, A year later Buyer, and Senior Buyer/Purchasing Agent the year after that. I enjoyed the contant pressure and learned alot about machine shops, contracts, purchasing, and negotiation. I even learned enough to write the Puchasing Policies that are still pretty much followed today.

My orginazation and sales skills were not left to rot when I was offered a position in the Rebuilds and Conversions group as Conversions Coordinator. Under Larry Manning I sharpened communication and customer relations skills with customer contact with companies such as Nabisco, Kraft, General Mills, and Unilever. My responsibilities quickly grew to determining what the customer needed, developing costing estimates, writing quotations, and managing the order as a project. The largets project that I completed (from first contact to product delivery) to this point was a 1.2M order that returned a 41% margin and kudos from the customer.

I had three years in as second man in the Conversions Department when the company was sold and our department was reorganized. Larry continued as Conversions Manager and I was transferred into Operations as a Project Manager. Our dedicated engineers where absorbed into the new machine group, and our assistant now worked for three managers.

The reorganization, an aggresive inventory reduction plan, and a major reduction in resources, resulted in a sharp decline in sales for the Company. A second reorganization and another large cut in personnel ended with my transfer back into purchasing. Not a fallback option I enjoyed but when your company drops half it's employees in a short time the opportunity for advancement, though tricky, becomes much greater.

My justification proved out a couple months later when Larry, The Conversions and Rebuild Manager resigned, in order to start his own business. I was asked to head up the department. This is the fun part...