It has not been an uneventful past couple of weeks.
As it turns out, I did not wind up bludgeoned to death by an irritating Frenchman.
It also turns out that a lot of the stereotypes Americans hold about the French are there because they are true. Sometimes I think I'm just better off being single, that way the only person who ever pisses me off is me.
Minus the loss of a friend (I'm leaving it at that. I refuse to turn what is a horrible thing into blog fodder), the crazy has been good though.
I am still at the job I didn't think that I'd like. Turns out, I was wrong. I love it here. I am good at what I do, and have kind of carved myself out a nice little niche. I have the best boss a girl could ask for, and for the most part my coworkers are a great bunch of people. There are a few exceptions to the "great bunch of people" statement, and mark my words: They will stop acting like assholes, or I will make their lives a living hell. It's their choice, really.
Anyway, about six months ago I interviewed for a job at what is going to be the biggest airline in the world. 6 months of interviews, and they finally came back with an offer.
And it was obscene.
I actually thought it was some sort of typo. After reading the entire thing, I was honestly surprised that they didn't include a pool boy named Raoul and my own company Porsche. I would not pay me that much, and I know me and I think that I am awesome.
The problem being? My manager would be going on Maternity leave 2 weeks after I got there, they were being totally inflexible with my start date, and from the sounds of it I would be walking into a huge mess. Not to mention they are currently working on a merger.
In the mean time, my boss where I'm at is finally comfortable enough to go on vacation for 2 weeks and leave me to take care of things, and even though I'm contract the work isn't slowing down any.
Decisions decisions.
Ultimately, I told my Very Awesome Boss that I would have to go to the airline unless I could be hired on as a full time employee at some point. No more of this contractor shit.(Contracting gives you a lot of flexibility, but this not getting paid for time off thing is starting to chap my ass. I haven't had a proper vacation in years and most of the time I feel like I'm a minor irritation away from hitting someone in the face with a stapler. I'm going to need those benefits sooner than later.) His boss was supposed to call me by end of day Friday, which is when they needed my answer.
Nothing. So I signed the papers. I had actually started faxing the signed offer over when his boss called me.
"YOU DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WITH THE AIRLINE YET DID YOU?"
What do you do with that?
If you're me, you frantically start hitting the cancel button while desperately yanking the papers out of the fax machine, while saying "No, why do you ask?"
At literally the very last second, they made me a verbal offer. She even offered me more vacation time than the airline, and the company would pay for my insurance until benefits kicked in. So I'm staying put. Sure I turned down a shit ton of money. Which sort of makes me itch. But on the same token, my boss went to amazing lengths to make me stay. My girls in marketing were super excited, and at the end of the day, working for a boss that not only doesn't make you want to kill yourself but is someone you genuinely like is something you can't put a price tag on. Very few people will ever feel that appreciated and valued at their place of work*.
Now I wait for the official offer, and hope I made the right choice.
I think I did.
*By the way. If you are my old boss? The one who always told me what a pain in the ass I was and how I was never really good at much? The airline's offer was FOUR TIMES what you paid me, and the place begging me to stay is a huge company. In short: Fuck you with a big stick.
