Job Loyalty

This month brings my dad's twentieth anniversary of working for the same company. I suspect that's an anomaly in this age. He doesn't feel any particular loyalty to the company, and recently told me he'll consider it a failure if he's still there when it's time to retire.

He's been happier for the past decade or so after he got out of the engineering department, off of the management track, and into a job out in the factory where he also gets to do some machining. It didn't hurt that he traded a job where he sometimes ended up working twenty-four hours straight or sleeping under his desk for one that required fifty hour weeks. He traded advancement and more money for sanity and time with us, and I'm glad.

His company isn't a great place to work. He has a pretty good relationship with his immediate supervisor, but the upper management doesn't grasp what he does or that the plant can't function without him. That isn't a good thing considering the problems his company has been having.

I'm 99% certain I won't be staying in this job for more than two years. My classes are improving, but I'm still far from the teacher these kids need me to be so there's the possibility that the school won't renew my contract at the end of this year. If, as I hope will happen, I continue to improve and become an effective teacher who enjoys teaching, I still wouldn't want to remain here. I see graduate school in my future, and even if that changes and teaching at the secondary level becomes my permanent career, there are school districts that are actually somewhat functional and aren't five hours away from the people I care most about.