Leaving the safety of government jobs can be a mistake. At least that is what I found out when I made one job change several years ago. I had been working for the government for almost ten years at the time. As a matter of fact, it was for a U.S. Senator. Yet, someone I knew from college came to me with an offer that I thought was a great opportunity. It was a chance to manager a catering facility he had purchased. He had a ten-year plan with expansion included in it, and I jumped at the opportunity.

I quickly realized my mistake. First of all, there were no events booked at the catering facility more than one month into the future of when he had purchased the business. The other major nightmare was he allowed the former owner to stay on as a consultant. The former owner kept commenting about how this should be some of our busiest times of the year, but of course there was one small problem. The former owner had pretty much ignored the business for months as far as booking events. As anyone who works in catering knows, your larger events are booked months in advance, not days. This resulted in the company struggling to get events booked. As time went on we booked more events, but had other issues.

The gentleman that I knew who hired me had financed the purchase of the company through the former owner. He purchased the business but not the building and had very large payments for rent and the business. We could not get ahead in the financial books.

During this time, three months into my job I found out my wife and I were expecting our first child. Two months after that it became clear the gentleman that hired me and owned the catering company could not meet payroll consistently. Two months after that I had to leave for another job. In effect in a period of nine months I lost my consistent paycheck, and my health benefits, all this while preparing for the birth of my first child.

Years later things have worked out well in another position, but back then it was a career change horror story.

Learn more about this author, Chris Kirk.
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