It was actually my second/third job into my career. I got #2 and #3 at the same time. One was working from 8 AM to 5 PM and the other was from 6 PM to 2 AM. I was working these two jobs like this for a year and a half. Position for both was web designer. On the weekends, I'd do web design freelance work. Managed to pay off my student loans in 2 1/2 years ;)

This current one, I'm still working and fighting for it everyday of my life for the past decade. I'm good at what I do and I do it well. I get to build landing pages for a variety of known and unkonwn companies. It allows me to be creative and I'm always working on something new everyday.

One day, a boss approaches me and tells me, "I want you to create a product that will 'wow' our clients and be different from what we are currently selling. Can you do it?" Took me a few hours to get the concept of it, but I designed a product that my company sells for $15,000 a pop, and usually takes about 10 hours to complete which includes design time and client changes, and is very popular among pharmaceutical companies.

That was the pros... a bit more about the cons... story time!

Unfortunately, while the job itself has been very enjoyable, especially because I got to work with my then-wife at the time, working with different bosses over the years has not been so pleasant. I've had a total of 6 bosses try to do it.

At one point, four bosses were trying to fire me all at the same time. They just didn't like me for whatever reason, and were trying to find every excuse to get rid of me. They should have all been fired on spot for wasting company dollars to have pointless weekly meetings with me (all four of them on the phone). Fortunately, they couldn't seem to find the justification to the HR department on an actual reason so after I caught on that it was only being used as a scare tactic, after doing the most ass kissing I'll never do again, it all stopped for a while. When you continously bring the company in over half a million dollars a year, that kind of adds some weight to your stay.

That is... until another boss arose and decided to have a go at it. For years, I played the game with him, knowing he wasn't going to be the one to get me fired. His boss is the one who hired me and once COVID-19 hit and we all were working from home, I made a minor mistake and he threatened my job, for the thousandth time. At this point, I was over it. I didn't mind being gone from this job if it meant I didn't have to work with him anymore.

So I said to him, "They let go of over 200 people from our company this past month, so if you're going to get rid of me, I urge you to do it now. All I want is one year paid salary which is reasonable considering I've worked here for so long and the fact is, I'll just file for unemployment and extend it for as long as I can beyond the 6 months they'd give me. If you come back with my exact offer, I'll sign whatever document you give me and I'll be gone. If you come back with anything less, we have no deal. Don't talk to me unless you really need to until then."

Four months go by. I waited patiently. No word from him about the offer and he hadn't spoken to me at all. And then a meeting was called. Today was the day. My day. I knew it was coming. All the bosses were there. Except him. Apparently, he'd been fired. Another boss gone. A total of five bosses now who had tried to fire me either left the company, were transfered to another department, or were fired.

And I've since had two more bosses since him... one left the company, she was not really an issue, and now I have a new boss, a former co-worker of mine, and she has tried several times, even making me fill out a "employee improvement plan", which I'd passed. Several more attempts have been made by her... she's starting to slowly get it, though I'm still working with her on it: maybe just work with me instead of resorting to trying to fire me?

The reason her job is stable and good is because of the work I do, so getting rid of me for someone else ain't going to be as easy as she thinks. Again, it's hard to justify getting rid of the senior web designer when they continue to bring in $500,000 year-after-year. Maybe it's not all about the money to all companies, but then again, maybe it is. However, I'm not doing anything to spite anyone. I can't seem to avoid every boss trying to fire me... and it seems to only be me. I've put that to the test too.

Moral of the story: if you love your job, you'll do what you can to keep it, even if that means.. just doing your job.