This is a bit of a long one, TL;DR at the bottom.
I have worked in instrument repair for 4 years. In that time I went from a pretty inexperienced tech to one of the best in the region for my company, to the point that the area specialist for our regional repairs would send me jobs he wasn’t comfortable taking on because he knew how skilled I am. When I moved to another city I transferred to the store in the new city and within a year took that repair shop from being barely functional to being one of the top in the region.
In the summer of last year I decided to go back to school to study guitar building and repair to further my skills. I gave my store 6 months notice that I would be gone for two months and in that time they failed to find anyone to stand in for me in repairs. I offered to train a temporary tech, sat in on interviews, and gave my blessing for multiple people to be hired in. Every single one was passed over for the job, and when the time came, I was told that I would have to work every Saturday to maintain my health insurance and keep my job. I acquiesced and spent two months at school five days a week, at the store one day, and had one day to see my wife.
In my time at the school my skills were noticed and I was recommended to one of the best repair shops in the country as a potential person to fill an opening in their shop. They reached out and I interviewed. 48 hours later I was offered a job for over double what I was making at my current store. I asked for a few weeks before I started to wrap things up at my old store and make sure all my customer repairs were finished up and the shop was ready for whoever came in next.
This morning I sat down with my store’s manager and told him that I was putting in my two week’s notice. I told him that I had gotten a job offer, and that I would stay on for two weeks to finish up any repairs that needed finishing and that I was willing to train my replacement ( even though it is not my job). He wished me the best of luck and said that we would discuss particulars moving ahead. A couple hours later he called me back in to his office and informed me that corporate’s policy states that if an employee puts in a notice and is taking a job with a competitor they are effectively fired. My manager walked me through the store as I collected all the tools I had brought in from my own shop to complete some of the bigger repairs I had taken on to “make sure I didn’t take anything that wasn’t mine.”
After 4 years of working my ass off to build up the repair departments for two stores in this company, taking it upon myself to learn and challenge myself to be better at my job, and going above and beyond to ensure that the repair department can continue to function, I am forced to leave behind thousands of dollars of repair work I have committed to do, not done. I was not even allowed to finish out the day. Half an hour after I was called in to my boss’s office I was on my way home from the store for the last time.
I understand that corporate wants to make sure that I am not stealing business from the store, but in doing so they have cut me off from the customers I committed to serve. Anyone who has checked in an instrument will be told that I no longer work there because I took a job with another company. The customers will be given the impression that I walked out on my commitment to them and those people will think that I am unreliable or will not fulfill my commitments. In a business where your name is associated with the quality of work you do, I will be known by some in the local music community as a bad tech, or a bad person to take their instruments to.
TL;DR – I gave my two weeks and had a plan to leave the shop in good shape and I was fired and not allowed to finish my shift.