Well it's been almost a year since I rejoined my old company.
Now, I've never been a big fan of "going back"...to a previous relationship, a previous way of life, a previous employer, or somewhere I've lived before. However I have managed, since 2002, to hit three of those four. While the less said the better about the return to the previous relationship ("Just keep the Margaritas coming, there, Barkeep!"), the return to Tucson wasn't so bad (although I would rather be in Phoenix, thank you very much)...and returning to my old job turned out to be one of the things that has really made me want to get up in the morning.
I would never have guessed that back in 2002 when I left them. Believing that you should never burn bridges, I still left them with as much acrimony as a person could have toward anything, although I was careful to keep that hidden. After I left I even refused to go into any of the old accounts I had with them. But hey, things change...and many of the things that I hated about my old job have gone away, it seems.
For one thing, the whole process of getting the stuff into the stores has been greatly improved. I realized just how much when recently my handheld ordering device broke down, and I had to not only place orders with an older machine, like before, but also check in merchandise BY HAND. This means also looking for missing items BY HAND...it added 30 minutes to each of my stops. By the end of the day I knew pretty much EXACTLY why I had left, before....
So, soon it will be a year...it's hard for me to believe it's been that long already! I just hope that it doesn't get worse, only better. As someone much wiser than me once said, "the only inevitability is change"...or something like that, anyway.