Well that’s it. As of 3:30 this afternoon I am no longer employed.
The reaction at work was a little strange but I suppose not totally unexpected. One or two people knew a bit about what I was planning for the end of the year but didn’t really understand it.
When I changed The Plan and decided to take the plunge earlier I gave 2 week’s notice. I explained to my boss what it was I would be doing. Cue the scenario that many others have faced before me. Explaining trading to someone who hasn’t got the faintest idea of what I am talking about. She tried to make the right noises from behind the glazed expression but I knew she didn’t get it.
A briefing was called to inform the rest of her team. I wasn’t in the briefing. Shortly afterwards one of the Account Managers ( I think she is a born again Christian or something similar) approached me and said, ” So Paul, I understand you’re a professional gambler?”. So I explained the difference between punting and trading. Glazed expression number 2…..
During the next week it was noticeable how few people were talking to me. It felt almost like they thought I was making a big mistake but none had the bottle to tell me. I was told that the born-again-godsquad muppet had been telling some of the others that she thought it was terrible to be encouraging others to gamble and that she was going to “have a word”. I was looking forward to that. Anyone foolish enough to talk down to me soon realises their mistake.
Over the last couple of days a few more asked what it was that I was going to do. Glazed expressions 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 followed. In the end I just settled for “its like the stock market”. The good thing about working for yourself is that you only have to deal with one idiot 😉
The-God-Squad was working at another site today so I never got the chance too shut her up publicly. Shame. If ever anyone needed shutting up….
So what prompted me to change The Plan? Newer readers may not know that The Plan was to turn full time at the end of the year. After Wimbledon my wife and I went away for a few days to celebrate our wedding anniversary. After a very nice meal at the hotel we were sitting in the summerhouse-cum-smoking hut having a drink and chatting. You know when someone starts a conversation and they are building up to something important? Well this was one of those times. She started saying how I was putting a lot of time and energy into the business and was wearing me out doing all that alongside a fulltime job. I thought it was going to go along the lines of , “you’re spending so much time on the laptop blah blah, no time for us blah blah, I dont think you should be thinking about doing this fulltime as we’ll never see you etc etc”.
However I was wrong. ” The business is going well. So why are you wasting time at work?”. She spent the rest of the evening coming up with reason after reason why I should trade full time straight away. She didn’t need to ofcourse but if she thinks it was her idea… 😉
So Monday is my first “proper” day as a fulltimer. This isn’t a holiday. No job to go back to next week. This is the ultimate in performance related pay.
I’ll write a bit of a diary post on how the day goes.
