Work: Update

Right after Thanksgiving, I was asked to go up to our Farmington office for a week to help them out since they were swamped with work for the year-end and we were pretty quiet in the NYC office. My week up there was really envigorating. I was extremely productive, something I hadn't felt in a long time. Some of it was probably due to having just come off of Thanksgiving vacation refreshed, but I think the change in scenery and work mentality contributed greatly to that.

After that initial week, I returned to NYC and still continued to do some work remotely for the Farmington office. Overall, it was a great experience and I seemed to impress my boss in Farmington as she gave me a very complimentary review.

On Monday, I found out that Greg, one of colleagues, had been presented with an interesting opportunity. Like me, he had also spent a week up in Farmington helping them out. I guess they continued to be overworked in Farmington; adding to that, they lost an underwriter at Christmas time so were severely understaffed. Greg was asked to start working for our Farmington office on a full-time basis. He would still be based in NYC (I don't think he would have accepted the offer if they asked him to move), but would now report to the Regional Vice President in Farmington.

My initial reaction was, why was Greg offered the position and not me? I was not even given the opportunity to contemplate the offer. It seemed like an interesting option: a chance to work in a new office, an office with a bigger book of business and territory, and the opportunity to do some traveling. If I had been offered it, I would have given it some serious thought, but I was not offered the opportunity.

Another thing that bothered me is that Greg and I have the exact same position in the company and in our office. We both started on the same day, were in the same training class, and for the majority of career, have been lumped together. I hate that I do this, but I always look at him from a competitors perspective. So when he got offered the new position, I quickly tried to determine if this was a promotion and had I just fallen behind in our "little race."

I'm a humble person, but if you asked me to be completely honest, I think I'm the better underwriter. We both come very different backgrounds and have different sets of values of work ethics, but I think I've put in the work in the last year to really develop myself from a career perspective so all of this was a little troubling, especially since we are about to have a yearly reviews where bonuses will be determined; I'm also getting ready to ask my boss for a sizable raise.

I'm not sure if my boss, John, sensed my uneasiness, but yesterday, he asked me into his office to talk. He said that he wanted to explain why Greg was offered the position and not me and just wanted to lay everything out on the table. Now he could just be gassing me, but he said that he was given the choice on who he should recommend to help out the Farmington office and when he thought about it, he saw me as being a more essential person in the future for the New York office and really didn't want to give me up. Wow...that really made me feel good. Again, he could just be BSing me (and if so, nice move John), but either way, it helped minimize some of my anxiety.

I'm now in an interesting position. We are now down to two underwriters in our NY office. I'm pretty sure, assuming that everything works out in his application process, that our senior underwriter, James, will be going to business school in the fall. He's already taken is GMATs and I think he's been interviewing at schools. That would leave just me as the sole underwriter. Also, John has expressed how much he wants me in the NYC office. So what's my next move? My review will happen in the next few weeks and I should be getting my bonus (hopefully) soon. I'm also pretty set on the pay raise that I want. If they say no, do I walk? I actually may have a pending job offer at another company in NYC. The next few weeks should be interesting.