At the time of my hire, Craig had several local businessmen as investors in the company. We never knew just who they were, just rumors. It seemed to be some sort of a big secret, just as the meetings that Craig had occasionally with them. But one of the investors was also a monthly visitor to our company. I am referring to Cecil Henn, a former Bryant manager, who would regularly visit to see how things were going and advise Craig on various items. He lived in Indiana, and drove to Vermont. Cecil was quite good at sitting down with us engineers and discussing his ideas on company structure. He was really the one who took the time to lay out a sort of company policy concerning the annual merit reviews and salary increases. Even then, we never really had anything written down as to job descriptions and salary ranges, like the big shops had. But at least we got to discuss our concerns, and Cecil gave each of us individual annual goals to work toward. These would be reviewed every year, and the reasons for success (or failure) would be discussed in detail.

The pay structure at Vermont Rebuild was almost impossible to nail down; each one of us would negotiate our salary at the time of hire. There was no hard and fast rule as to just what any position paid. That being said, nobody really knew (except the payroll person) just what anyone made. We were kept in the dark to prevent any possible friction between us. The floor personnel were paid hourly; office and management staff were on salary. There were no time clocks to punch, everyone was on the “Honor System”. We all made out weekly timesheets which our pay would be based on.

When I joined in 1991, the comment was made that my salary was based on a “40 hour week”. But a lot of this was never in writing. Later in my career, that comment changed to a “45 hour week”. Easy to do, if nothing is written down. There was talk about having an employee handbook written up, but I don’t remember ever seeing one.

If the mechanics on the floor were paid hourly, with time-and-a-half over 40 hours, the rest of us ended up with a salary based on 45 hours, and being paid straight time after that. So in effect, we had to “donate” 5 hours to the company before getting reimbursed. So if we worked, say, 50 hours, we were basically earning half pay for the last 10 hours. It was even more lopsided when it came to travel; the hourly people were paid for their travel time, salaried people were not. We were a non-union shop.

On the plus side, salaried folks had sick time and personal days paid. But, again, there was no written rule as to just how much sick or personal time each of us had; it was at management discretion. But I don’t remember anyone having a problem with this.

As with most of the shops in town, we got paid on Thursdays. It was an easy walk for me over to the bank in the plaza. If you had an account at the Maple Valley Credit Union, you could have some, or all of your pay sent there automatically.