Leaving a family business?

Question

This is a repost but wanted to get some more opinions:

I once worked for a small family owned grocery store. My aunt and uncle received items in the back while filling in at the register when needed. My cousin also worked there as the primary cashier. I stocked shelves and worked the meat counter. It was only the four of us working the entire store.
Once I was trained to work the register though, my cousin started showing up less and less, either showing up late or taking entire days off. He clearly knew he could get away with it since his parents owned the place and pretty soon, his parents started to work harder due to his constant absences.Eventually got fed up with their refusal to fire him and secretly started making plans to find a new job. One night after the store closed, I asked to speak to all three of them and officially gave them my two weeks notice. My aunt and uncle seemed unhappy but my cousin was very angry and said 'WHY WAIT TWO WEEKS? IF YOU DON'T WANNA STAY, THEN LEAVE TOMORROW! GET THE F*CK OUT!" That shocked me since it was his laziness that made me want to leave. I was trying to be professional and give them a proper notice but he seemed to take it personal.Anyways, been working at my new job for a year now but I always think back to how I left the family business and wonder if I could've handled it better? Was I justified in my leaving? Anyone ever work at a family business before?

? · Answer

I'd agree, including cousin in the resignation discussion was silly.

Working in a small business is interesting as one usually gets an inside look at the challenges of running a business. Auntie and Uncle were probably never going to turn the business over to YOU, though, so getting out after a while was a good move. If Cousin was peeved because his free ride was over, well, understandable. I can imagine what it will be like when he runs the show - not fun.

He behaved unprofessionally. People who run businesses have to be able to handle the fact that people leave - they move with a spouse's better job, find a better one themselves, decide to be a stay-at-home spouse, go back to college, take care of an aging parent, likely a dozen more good reasons I haven't thought of right now.

I gave notice to my last part-time job (a family-owned business) and at that moment, the boss just accepted it and said nothing. He knew I was going to go full-time with my other employer. Days later he said "____ doesn't have enough business to give you full-time hours, you know."  Kind of unprofessional, but who cares, I was out in another week. I have no idea *why* he would say anything, especially since he was trying to sell the business, and no new owner would have to keep me on. He or she would be able to hire their own employees (very likely their own family) and I'd have been out of a job, anyway.

Warw1zard · Answer

It would be interesting to know what  you do for living today, and also what happened to the family and their store.
One of the advantages of working with family is that you can learn so many skills and positions at work at a much faster rate, then if you do it working for someone else.Yes, you could have done it differently. For example, if you were less focused on what your cousin wasn't doing, you would had been more focused on what you could be doing. Potentially you could had taken over the store and let your aunt and uncle go on vacation. But for that you would, of course, needed to know how to manage people... which you couldn't probably learn just from your aunt and uncle... I don't know. Having family members who are there for the paycheck could slow down so many things... I also don't know how big of a store that was, but it sounds like your aunt and uncle had to do it all and maybe had a day off when the store was closed (1-2 times week) 
which is usually very exhausting.
Please update!

Anonymous · Answer

You can stop asking this now.    You've done it multiple times and it's been a year (if your story is true).

It's odd and unprofessional to include a coworker you wanted fired in a meeting where you submit your resignation to the managers/owners.

A Hunch · Answer

You are always able to leave a job.  You aren't a slave.  You can work anywhere you want.

However, giving two weeks notice like it's a regular job with no strings attached is pretty crappy.  Why didn't you tell them when you made the decision to start looking.  Also, I hope you didn't tell them the real reason why you left.  You should have made it clear to them that they did nothing to make you leave but you knew it was time to get experience at a different job.

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Leaving a family business?

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