I shared a building with my father for 10 years. We are both custom machine shops however I have my customers and he has his. I own CNC Machines and he owned old mechanical technology. He wanted to get into get into the CNC side of machinig but no matter how hard i tried I could not teach him to program. So for 10 years, I programed 4 of his CNC's and programed and opperated the 3 CNC's i owned by purchasing them on my own. We do alot of short run work so I wrote atleast 10-14 programs a week for him, loaded the tooling, proofed and tweeked his jobs. And, I was demanded to drop whatever I was doing to do his programs, even though I was never employed by him.
I ran my own separate cnc shop, but my duties were considered secondary to his demands. He took about 3 3week long vacations a year at which time i handles all the demands of my shop and the demands of his shop until his return. I quoted all his CNC jobs to his customers, an d because i owned the cnc machines first, he borowed all my tooling instead of purchasing his own. Honestly, we often did not see eye to eye, and i'm as stubboren as he is. But, I never expected he would sell his buisness without ever giving me an oppurtunity to buy him out.
One day, I found out he sold out to some guy, and I have to find a new building in a month or two. After 10 years, if he likes me or not, i deserved a better heads up or at least an arrangement to buy him out over a stranger. Rip off? Maybe not, but certainly lack of integrity beyond what I ever imagined.
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