End of an Era

Big sigh.  The shareholder vote has passed successfully today, and the merger transaction in which my company will be acquired closes in a little over a week.  I started working here almost two years ago.  At the time I joined, the company was struggling after some tactical errors, and just as we got back on our feet, the economic tsunami hit in fall 2008 - torpedoing our results for another year.  However, this team has worked really hard and made a lot of improvements and we all have some ambivalence about decision to accept the acquisition overture and put it to shareholder vote.

I had another job offer at the time I was first considering whether to work here, and I was concerned about the long term viability of this company so I seriously considered turning them down.  But, if I had then a crystal ball and knew when I accepted the job that it might only last two years, but also knew that I would have SO MUCH FUN during those two years, I would make the same decision over and over - no question about it.  My only regret is that I might look back at my career in another few decades and realize that I never had such a good time working as I have had here, and isn't a shame that it only lasted two years.  But on the other hand, I shall always count myself lucky to have had a position I enjoyed so much because of the people I worked with.

We all got together for dinner at a swanky hotel in Oregon's wine country on Saturday night as a last hurrah before everything changes and our CFO's position is eliminated in a couple of weeks.  Our CFO actually deserves the credit for coining and propogating my nickname, Keenie Beanie - you can see it there on the little placecard his wife wrote up.  He's a great guy to work for.  He got up and said some lovely things about each of us, and I'm fairly certain that he welled up a bit there at the end.  In the immortal words of Dolly Parton in Steel Magnolias, "I have a strict policy that nobody cries alone in my presence," and as such, I welled up a bit too.  But we were also all laughing, as per usual, which took the edge off a bit.

I'm not sure what's going to happen with my employment with the merged company, only that my current position will be eliminated and some of the people I've enjoyed working for aren't going to be around. So here we are, at the end of an all-too-short era and I'm feeling pretty melancholy about it all... raise a (mental) glass to it for me, folks.