Moving on up

It's 2:30 am after a long work week, but I guess I'm too excited to sleep right now. I found out today that in about three weeks I will be moving out of the bike shop at work to manage the bike department in sales. It's been two weeks in the making, but the decision was made and I was offered the job today.

It started a couple of weeks ago when we sold a higher end Gary Fisher bike on a Tuesday evening. Less than two weeks prior to its sale, the bike had been hanging in our backstock area because there wasn't room for it on the floor. I had started re-stocking the floor any time that a bike sold, which would normally be the job of the person who is managing bikes, but said person had been neglecting that part of their duties. The obsessive compulsive in me needed to see those slots filled on the floor, so I started doing so. I had placed a few bikes that would probably be considered either specialty bikes or at least bikes with a narrow clientele and within two weeks three of them had sold including the aforementioned Gary Fisher.

Back to the Tuesday evening... Bryan (the assistant manager that oversees bikes) had helped get the customer set up with the Fisher and I told him later in the evening that I couldn't help but feel a little bit proud of the fact that I had been putting these bikes out there and they had been selling. He said, "Maybe you should move out to sales and manage bikes for me." His tone was somewhat ambiguous as to whether he was serious or not, so I just blew it off as a joke.

Later, I started thinking about it. I talked to Amy about it when I got home and did the typical "pros and cons" list so often associated with this type of a decision. I talked to Bryan on Thursday and told him that I wasn't sure if he'd been serious or not, but that he'd gotten me thinking and that I'd be interested in talking more about the possibility of managing bikes for him.

Several more conversations and much prayer later, I get to start my new responsibilities on February 15th. It will mean more pay with better income potential (since commission is a part of the game, there's really no telling exactly what I'll be making) and not too many more hours. It will be another new challenge, but at least I know the environment and the people. The fact that I just keep getting more passionate about cycling doesn't hurt matters either.

Oh, and I can still build bikes during my time off for a little extra income and to keep my hands dirty. What's the good of being around bikes all the time if you can't play with them every now and then?