What was I thinking????

Over the last week or so, or really since I saw that Best Buy had posted an opening for my former position, I have been asking myself what I was thinking to leave Best Buy. Well, I know what I was thinking...we'll be in a much better position and this company seems really interested in getting cranking with new site selection studies. Well, we are in a better position. We have almost all of our outstanding debt paid off, except for student loans, and the company is really interested in exploring new markets for our site selection studies. Did you catch that last part, exploring. Yeah, I bet you can't guess what I felt when I heard that word for the first time...

The thing is this, one of the reasons I felt like it was a good idea to come here was because I thought they were truly interested in building up their studies department. And they are, as long as it's for banks and credit unions and as long as it gets the construction job afterword. I'm basically a nice little thing that they can waive in the faces of the bank presidents and say "Hey, this guy worked for Best Buy and Home Depot. Doesn't that sound nice?"

Really what bothers me is that they under value the work I do. They sell it for WAY below what it actually costs me to do the work in the hopes of getting the construction job where they make the "real" money. And I get that the real money is made on the construction projects, but they could sell the same crap studies as everyone else if that's all they wanted to do. They don't need me to bust my ass and give a great study for some banker who looks at the maps and says "ooh, those look pretty."

It's just a bit sad really. I've decided to give them a chance to prove to me how interested they really are in expanding this piece of the puzzle, but that chance is limited to a year. By that time, retailers ought to be ready to roll again...who knows maybe even Best Buy will want me back...