Far From Home

Today my boss asked me again if I would be willing to relocate. It was funny timing. On the one hand it was obvious; I had told him before that one of the reasons I was not willing to move was the care I was giving my grandfather, who recently died.

But that didn’t seem to be why he mentioned it. He brought up the possibility of relocating after he outlined a number of projects he wanted me to be involved in, and for every one I can recall it would be beneficial for me to there, several states away, rather than here. Further, all the projects would have very minimal impact here–at the site I am supposedly assigned to.

If you look at my job title it says something about orders. I was supposed to be a liason for the central order managament functions, helping drive more customer awareness and order fulfillment sensitivity. I’ve always preferred back-room database development to front line people manipulation so how much my work has been defined by what the description suggests has always been murky. But in the course of changes we have begun a plan to send products from the factory to the central distribution warehouse, rather than shipping from this site to the customer, and that further undermines what role someone with my title would have here.

My boss said we had to consider my future development and further roles I could take with the company. But I already told him how I wanted to be developed and what future role I was looking at.

I hedged. I told him I would seriously consider it and let him know if my mind changed. It’s not fair to ask me at work, because when I am at work all I think about is work; and as concerns work, I would prefer to be there than here. But the sharp division between my work and the rest of my life is something I would like to erode. As far as I can see, I would have to leave my family to pursue my work–a devil’s bargain.