T

hat moment you realize it’s time to bring an employee into your business… well, only someone who has founded their own business knows what a milestone that is.

And around a year after I left my job to devote my time to Sofft Save, I felt like the time had come.

The business had grown beautifully, I had a nice-sized client base that needed to be managed, and I knew that if I had more time — if I wasn’t the one actually dealing with customer service and maintenance and all the day-to-day secretarial and admin kind of work  — I could really begin scaling the business in even bigger ways.

Aside from that, I was expecting a baby and knew that I needed some sort of help to keep the business running during maternity leave — otherwise I’d literally be answering emails from my hospital bed. This service-based business, with a bunch of clients relying on us for their day-to-day business needs, wasn’t the kind of thing I could just leave for a few weeks, or even a few days.

All in all, it was the perfect time to bring in someone new, train them in, and have them primed to take over while I was out of work.

Wednesday morning was always my “business development” time. I’d close my emails, turn the phone on silent, and sit — either by myself, or sometimes with a business coach or strategist — to work on long-term business development. I’d brainstorm new ideas, follow up on old ones, try to move some of my long-term projects a step or two forward, do research, implement new processes, things like that. Now, when I sat down with a giant coffee and a pen and paper — it’s so much easier to brainstorm the old-fashioned way — I knew that I wanted to figure out a plan for hiring an employee and delegating most of what I was doing day to day, so that I could focus on the bigger picture.

Eventually, I came up with a six-month plan. Stage One would be creating a job description, advertising, interviewing candidates, and completing the hire. Then I’d need to spend some time training them in, make sure they knew exactly what they were doing, probably doing a lot of hand-holding for the first few weeks.

At that point, I would be able to take a step back — and according to my calculations, that would bring me right up to my maternity leave. I would be able to take a real break for a few weeks — sure, answering questions here and there, but imagine not having to answer a single client call or email for a solid month!  — and then, when I would be ready to ease back into work, I could focus on the big-picture goals and ideas I’d been wanting to expand into. Reach out to some major corporate companies, work on onboarding new clients, and let an employee — or maybe even two!  — manage the day-to-day business operations.

IT

took some time to craft a job description that encapsulated everything I would need from an employee, and then even more time to whittle that down into a brief, concise, and yet still enticing ad that I posted in a bunch of classified sections, some email lists, and so on.

It was the right time of year to search for an office employee. All the seminary girls were coming home and looking for jobs, and I received a flurry of resumes that all looked very, very similar.

But this kind of thing was my forte. I dove in, called references, asked discerning questions, whittled down the candidates to a few who stood out, and called them in for interviews.

Meeting the girls in person made things even clearer. Two were obviously not a fit, another couple could’ve worked, but when I met Russy Hersh, I knew I’d found my top choice.

Russy was confident but refined, had a charming smile, took things seriously, and was clearly bright — when I began explaining some of the job responsibilities to her, she was quick to catch on and asked some discerning questions. I spent more time speaking to her than I had done with the others, and a day later, I emailed her the job offer.

A

nd then I had it. My very first employee.

Russy was going to work in a sleepaway camp for the second half of the summer, so we agreed up front that I’d train her during July, and when she returned from camp, she’d start working in earnest. It was important to me that the training should be done earlier, since I was scheduled to go on maternity leave before Succos, and I wanted Russy to have had a solid few weeks of experience before I’d leave her to navigate things more or less on her own.

During the training month, I paid Russy, and tried to make sure things were comfortable for her. I added a water machine and coffee machine to the office space I’d created in a small side room in my house — until then, I’d just nipped to the kitchen to get myself a cup of water or a coffee — and I even prepared her a package of nosh before she left for camp. It was my first time being an employer, and I knew all too well how hard it was not to feel valued in a job setting.

I was happy with my choice. Russy was punctual, diligent, and very smart. She caught on to the systems and processes and even the software lingo quickly; she handled customer communications with professionalism and warmth at the same time; and she even suggested a couple of new ideas to streamline our processes.

When she left for camp, I went back to doing all the daily work on my own, but it was a relief to know that come September, my business would be in good hands.

T

he start of the school year was a relief for me. I was in my ninth month, the kids were cranky and restless, and I’d been putting in an alarming amount of hours at work to keep up with our growing clientele.

On Russy’s first day of work, I stuck around for the first couple of hours to help her relearn the ropes and answer any questions, and then I decided to treat myself to an unheard-of luxury: a nap. It was a dream, and I realized how badly I needed this. How could I possibly run a business, while doing all the day-to-day nitty-gritty work and secretarial and admin tasks, while taking care of my house and family? It was absurd, and it was a good thing that everything was changing.

T

wo weeks in, everything crashed.

By then we were actually at the stage when I didn’t have to come in to the office at all, for the entire day, and Russy could handle everything on her own — sometimes with a quick call or text to check something with me, usually with forwarding a couple of the more complex emails to me to handle, but still. I could go out for the day, I could take care of errands, I could work on other projects, I could sleep — and things were working. My business was running. Customers were happy. And I was delighted.

Until Russy asked to speak to me at the end of the workday.

I was rushing out to do carpool, but I could give her a minute or two.

“Is everything okay? Can we talk tomorrow?” I remembered, belatedly, that I had a doctor’s appointment first thing in the morning. “You know what? I have five minutes now.”

“It won’t be long. I just — wanted to tell you,” Russy was stammering a little, shifting from foot to foot. “Basically, about the job. I — I have to leave in the end. I know I need to give a month’s notice so I wanted to tell you now…”

A month’s notice? After two weeks?

I glanced at my phone, even though I knew the date. It was exactly one week before my due date.

“I — I’m really surprised to hear that,” I said, trying — and failing — to keep a casual, calm tone of voice. “Is it something about the job? Something we can talk about? The salary?” Even as I said that, I wasn’t sure what I could do, exactly. I couldn’t afford to up her salary just yet — and besides, I was paying her nicely for a first-time office job. Was it the hours? Something I said? Something I did?

“No, no, it’s not that,” Russy looked supremely uncomfortable. “It’s just that something else came up, and it’s more what I was looking for… I’m so sorry. I know it took time to train me in. I don’t mind to train in the next person if that helps you….”

Train in someone new. Now. I was in my ninth month of pregnancy, the seminary girls all had jobs by now, where was I even going to find someone to take over, right before the Yom Tov season? And have her ready to take things over before I went on leave?

All those plans. All those careful arrangements, so I could avoid having to choose between recovering from birth or keeping my business afloat. All those careful interviews and researching candidates, choosing one girl, training her in, all the things I’d done to try and be the perfect employer and make this work for her — all to have it thrown back in my face because something else came up.

I was furious.

“What’s the chinuch system doing wrong if this is what post-seminary girls are doing?” I ranted to my sister, a seasoned high school mechaneches. “Are they so selfish, so blindsided by what they want and like? What happened to menschlichkeit? Someone trained you in, gave you your first job opportunity, how can someone just do that?” I sucked in a breath, but it just fueled my anger. “I know she’s entitled to give notice. But come on! She knew I’d spent a month training her, she knew she’d only just started, she knew that I would need her to manage things on her own when I have the baby! And she just waltzes off to the next shiny opportunity without giving it a second thought?”

If I could tell Russy one thing, it would be: There are clauses on a contract, and there’s simply being a mensch. How could you just take those weeks of training, the fact that I gave you your first job and all that, and throw it back at me — just when I need you most?

Russy

Job hunting. Résumés, applications, interviews, comparing notes with friends… it was a whole new world.

When I came home from seminary, I knew I wanted an office job. I didn’t want to work in a school — I wanted a job in a business, with room for growth. I was also hoping to start studying on the side, so preferably a job that wouldn’t be too taxing or intensive — no teaching posts for me, not with all the grading and preparation that is involved.

Ma was the one who noticed the posting about the administrative assistant position at a company called Sofft Save. The starting salary was nice and the benefits sounded enticing. The owner of the business was a frum woman, Ma knew the name vaguely — a friend of a friend, maybe?  — and it seemed like a nice opportunity. I sent my resumé there, as well as to a bunch of other places, and waited to hear back.

M

eira from Sofft Save was one of the first to show real interest in my application. I’d had a couple interviews already, but this one seemed different. Instead of asking me questions and then dismissing me with a polite, “We’ll be in touch by email,” Meira began telling me a lot more detail about her business, almost as if she was feeling out my interest in the position.

To be honest, it didn’t sound captivating. Software solutions, brokering, go-between… I don’t know, I just wasn’t so interested in this stuff. But it was probably the sort of thing that became more interesting once you got to know it. And besides, I was good at things like customer service, making calls, handling requests efficiently… that was exactly the sort of job I’d imagined myself doing.

The next day, I received a job offer along with a contract. I asked my father to review the fine print, and it looked good. The salary was decent for a starting rate, it included paid training, and while I wasn’t 100 percent sure, I was hoping it would be something I could build on — get a raise, take on more responsibilities.

Besides, there was a big advantage to working with a frum woman, in her own office. It seemed like a good working environment, and it wasn’t like I had any other offers.

Would software services really become more interesting? I wasn’t sure, but I was definitely willing to give it a try.

M

eira was eager for me to jump into the training right away, although I was still kind of fresh off the airplane. I’d been hoping for a few weeks to relax, spend time with family, adjust to post-seminary life. But Meira explained that she needed me to really know what I was doing in time for September, that I’d have a few weeks to work under her before she’d be going on maternity leave.

That made sense, plus she was fine with me taking off August for my second-half camp job. And the training period was shorter work days, so it wasn’t like I was out from nine to five while my family had fun on vacation.

A week or two into the training, I heard back from one or two other jobs I’d applied to, both of them offering me jobs. I felt a twinge of regret — would I have enjoyed those better? One was in a large office where several of my friends would be working — low pay, but a great social life. The other was in a marketing agency, it just sounded so much more interesting than software. But I didn’t give those other opportunities too much thought — I couldn’t be sure they were really better than what I had, and I wanted to focus on the job I’d accepted and give it my all.

It wasn’t easy. There was a lot to learn, a lot to remember. And the techy software details… I don’t know, I just found them b-o-o-o-r-i-n-g. It was kind of a relief when I stopped working to get ready for camp, and the thought of having a month off was very enticing.

Part of me wondered if it was bad news to feel so disinterested in my job already, but surely office jobs took getting used to? And wasn’t every job boring or tedious or annoying at times?

I’ll be fine, I told myself.

C

amp was like a last taste of childhood. I worked hard, sure, that’s what staff positions are all about, but still. It was camp, cheering and singing and running through dewy grass in a sweatshirt and long skirt; late-night DMCs and spontaneous kumzitzes; bonding and breakouts and new BFFs that you’re sure will last forever (or at least until the last night of camp).

I put work out of my mind and relished every moment of summer fun… and then it was over, and I landed back to real life. Hard.

I’d never been the type to dread the first day of school. I loved camp, loved summer, but I was also a good student who enjoyed the crisp freshness of new school supplies, the challenge of getting to know new teachers, a new schedule. I’d always looked forward to September, even as much as I thrived in camp.

But now….

I came back to work with a determination to, well, make it work. It took a day or two to get reoriented, and then I dove back in, answering emails, fielding calls, researching software options and sending out proposals for developers, acting as the broker for the software services our clients needed.

Some parts were okay. I liked talking to clients, hearing them out, getting the information down and entering it in an orderly fashion into Meira’s very cool database. But the research, the technical aspects… they drained me. I felt headaches creeping on by 11 each morning, and it took effort to drag myself through the rest of the day.

Besides the tediousness of some of the work, I still kept having questions — there was still so much I didn’t understand. Meira was nice about it, but she wasn’t always around — I got the feeling that she felt like she’d trained me in already, we were done with that part, and she thought I could handle things independently by now.

Well, the vote of confidence was nice, but if I genuinely didn’t know something, what was I supposed to do?

I muddled through a few days, miraculously not making any egregious errors, and asked more questions than I felt comfortable with, but that was what I had to do. I figured maybe once I really knew what I was doing, things would be easier.

But even after a full week passed, then another few days… I still didn’t enjoy what I was doing. And the thought of doing it all alone when Meira took her maternity leave was just… scary.

I couldn’t picture myself sitting in this office for the next year, or even the next few months, doing something that I found mind-numbingly boring and so hard to understand. I thought I would learn on the job. I thought it would get more interesting once I understood everything better, but really, really, these technical software things… they just weren’t for me.

“I don’t know what to do about my job,” I told my parents one night. “It’s just not working out the way I thought it would.”

My father looked thoughtful. “I wonder…” he said, but he didn’t say more.

A

nd then I got the call.

It was my father’s friend, Mr. Firer. He owned a large company. I didn’t know much about it, but I knew that he employed many people and it was a successful business.

“I’m looking to hire someone to replace our outgoing customer service rep,” he told me. “It’s a position that will eventually expand into managing a team of representatives, and since we take customer service very seriously, it’s a department I’m willing to invest a lot into.”

He named the starting salary, adding that this was “just for the beginning. Raises are commensurate with experience and with taking on additional responsibilities.” Even without that clause, the offer was substantially more than what I was being paid at Meira’s office.

The more he told me, the more excited I was at the prospect. The job sounded right up my alley — handling customer service for a product-based business was just so much simpler than twisting my brain to understand software terminology and search for the right program developer to match with a company’s needs. And eventually hiring and leading my own team was a dream. This was interesting, exciting — there was real potential for growth, an excellent salary, and even the hours were shorter than my office hours at Meira’s place. I’d be able to spend a solid chunk of time every day working toward my degree, which was something I really wanted to do.

And all of this meant that this job wouldn’t just be better for me right now, but in the long term, too. I was about to enter shidduchim, I wanted to marry a boy in learning, and I wasn’t naive — I knew that supporting a husband in kollel wasn’t going to be easy. My parents didn’t have much. They would give what they could, but I needed a job — a degree, a career direction — that would help me in the future. And it was obvious that working for Mr. Firer was a much better bet than continuing in an admin role I hated for a business that was still too new to know where it would be five years from now.

B

ut now, I was in a quandary.

Technically, I could give one month’s notice and leave Meira’s employment. But… I felt bad. She’d invested so much in me — I was her first hire. I thought about that sweet gift package she’d sent when I left for camp. And she was going on leave soon. How could I let her down just then?

“Can Mr. Firer maybe wait three more months?” my mother suggested. “That way you can help Meira until she’s back to work, and leave afterwards….”

But Mr. Firer, while understanding, wasn’t able to hold a job opening that long.

“My employee is leaving in three weeks. So a month would be fine, but longer than that…” he gave the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

My father suggested that we go speak to a rav, presenting the dilemma and asking for daas Torah how to handle it. I’ll be honest, I was kind of nervous that the rav would say to stay in my first job, and I really, really, wanted out of it. But I wanted to do the right thing, and I knew if daas Torah would tell me not to take Mr. Firer up on his offer, that’s what I would do.

But the rav didn’t say that. “You’re not obligated to stay beyond the terms in your contract,” he told me. “Even if it’s putting your employer in a difficult position, you’re allowed to put your best interests first. Perhaps you could offer to work out of hours for her for a little longer, or train in your replacement, or give some other extra help, out of hakaras hatov for the fact that she gave you a job and trained you in, and so on.”

I was relieved to hear the psak. I didn’t want to let Meira down, but I had to do what was best for me and my future. Didn’t I have the right to do that?

B

reaking the news to Meira was a whole lot easier said than done.

“I’m surprised to hear that,” she said, raising her eyebrows and pinning me with a look that made me feel like I was back in high school. “Is it something about the job? The salary? Maybe we can work something out?”

She was desperate, I realized. Desperate for me to stay. She didn’t have anyone else lined up, and she wouldn’t be able to work herself in a few weeks’ time.

I felt terrible. “I would be happy to help out with whatever I can. Training in the next person, if that would help…” I offered, knowing it just wasn’t enough for Meira.

She pursed her lips. “I don’t know what to say,” she said, finally. “Honestly, I didn’t expect this from you. I thought you had more commitment than that. And I expected… loyalty to your job, you know? Not jumping ship because something else came up. It’s just not the way things work in the working world, you know? People value loyalty, consistency, sticking with something.”

I knew she was saying that because she was so upset, but still, it hurt. I was a loyal person, and consistent, and responsible. I’d agonized over this decision, and had taken it to a rav. I wasn’t just skipping from job to job, trying things out at a whim. But this job just wasn’t cutting it for me, and I had a dream offer waiting for me.

Honestly, what would Meira herself have done in my place?

If I could tell Meira one thing, it would be: I’m sorry to let you down, but this job isn’t working well for me — and with a much better offer literally having fallen into my lap, can you understand why I won’t turn it down? 

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1029)