Once upon a time in a kingdom far from normal there lived a old bearded bald man. He lived a quiet little life of desperation trudging a long way to and from work every day. He had a beautiful wife and two wonderful little kitties, and every day he had to go to work he missed them. One day a fairy god-friend popped out of the forrest and said, “Oh you poor old, cranky, ugly man, what foul fate has befallen you? You should travel to the little brook not far from your home and there you will find a new job and all will be well, though I can't promise your hair will grow back.” So the bearded bald man visited the little brook and. . . .

I've been working in Portland for over two years now and the commute has taken its toll on everything. Our two cars are 9 years apart yet they nearly have the same number of miles. My free-time has all but disappeared and for that all manner of hobbies and personal projects have been put on indefinite hold (as such I've yet to write The Great American Novel, nor have I illustrated The Great Sethian Children's Book, but perhaps that is a good thing, for it would be a twisted and terrible book filled with kindly monsters and mean little children). Our marriage has not suffered to any great extent, but the cost of driving to Portland and back five days a week has done much to drain our budget of any “fun money” (we spend nearly as much on the two cars per annum that we do on our mortgage!).

Since I was laid off nearly three years ago we have not stopped praying for God to provide me with a job in Salem, and I have not ceased to look. It seemed an impossible request and there were many times that many different people suggested I look elsewhere; perhaps God would not have me work in Salem but in some other city. There is no moral to this story (none that I can think of) but in the end I now have a new job here in Salem that will start the Monday after Thanksgiving.

A buddy of mine has been keeping his ears open for any job opportunities in Salem, consequently when he heard of a job opening he sent me an email letting me know who to contact about the job. Sadly he didn't know any details, just that it was a technical job and involved building web pages. I sent an email asking for some details of the job and sent a link to my online portfolio, and I did not hear back from anybody. I gave up hope, as with so many of my attempts to get a job have seemingly been ignored. I mentioned to my buddy that nothing had happened and at some point he was back in contact with employer for out of the blue I got an email about the job, and at an address I do not hand out to prospective employers.

The email simply restated that they were looking for an IT guy who has some web skills and if I was interested to call so we can setup a time to meet. Now I've learned over the years that good bosses are hard to come by, but bad and/or incompetent ones are plentiful beyond reason. I was being offered what amounted to an interview and he did not need to see my resume; I had little hope that I would want to work for this company, for the last time I was hired thus I found a mismanaged company that had to lay me off. Nevertheless an interview is not a job so we played a round of Phone Tag and made an appointment to meet on Friday at 4 o'clock.

At this point I'm now scheming and plotting a way to leave early on Friday so as not to arouse suspicion. My boss is inordinately paranoid and the last thing I need at work is to have a boss who suspects I'm days away from quitting. Mind you I am not given to lying, and my boss is given to asking blunt questions. With a quick prayer I simply asked to leave early so I could make an appointment and he gave it to me, no questions asked. This all happened on Halloween, so I'll hear no talk of Halloween being cursed.

Come Friday and the office is empty save me, and I thought I might be able to slip out before anyone arrived, for there are days when the appraisers are so busy they do not return to the office until the late afternoon, sometimes not even returning at all. This was not to be one of those days; my boss arrived two hours before I needed to leave. I couldn't just leave and not say anything; at the very least that would be rude. So I found myself dawdling by fifteen minutes so as not to seem to be leaving too early (I wanted to account for Friday traffic; in the end I was three minutes late). I told him I needed to leave in order to beat traffic and he bid me farewell and did not ask about my appointment. As I said, my boss is paranoid, and every other time I needed to leave early he would ask questions until he knew exactly what I was doing, where I was going, and why, so I feared he would do the same now, and when he didn't I was stunned. In truth I thought it might be an omen, but that would be silly and superstitious.

I left work far earlier than I usually do, and I though I would beat the traffic, and for the most part I did; people in Portland do not know how to drive in the rain, to the extent that they drive painfully slow which is a poor substitute for being cautious for I still managed to find an accident plugging up the freeway. Nevertheless I made it down to Salem and to the exit I needed with plenty of time to spare; as it turns out I had too much time to spare. Holly and I agreed that should I have the time I should go home and put on a pair of slacks for the interview (I was in jeans so as not to tip off the boss that something was up). I looked at the clock and saw that I was a full thirty minutes early, too early to just sit in the waiting room but not really enough time to go home and change. I decided to go home, and thus I was exactly three minutes late (now I know how long my commute will be). (For the curious I did call ahead and warn him I would be 2-3 minutes late. Nailed it.)

The interview itself was an odd one. I brought a copy of my resume and he read it first thing. There is nothing more awkward or uncomfortable than to have a prospective employer read your resume in front of you. As it turns out his reading of my resume initially worked against me. His interpretation of my job history was that I had breadth of knowledge but not depth in any one field, and that because I had worked for a number of companies (but only three employers as I explained) I was perhaps not reliable. It was not my resume but my actual work which decided things; I walked him through what I had done at my current job and that convinced him I knew what I was doing, though to what extent I was not sure.

I was given a job offer, with an hourly wage rather than an annual salary so I was not immediately sure what I would be taking home, and didn't really feel like borrowing his calculator to figure it out; I always feel uncomfortable talking about money with employers. The job itself turns out to be building web sites, with some e-commerce and inventory tracking, for their clients to better manage their business relationship with them. In truth I'm not 100% certain what all that entails and what the vision is, but I got enough of an idea of what my duties would entail to make a decision; as to that I will be what sounds like the lead programmer, and only a programmer. I will not have to do help-desk, nor will I have to handle the servers and backups and Internet connectivity, etc. For once I get to wear only one hat.

Naturally Holly was happy, and since I was in Salem ninety minutes earlier than I usually was, and given it was a Friday, we went out to dinner and dessert and talked about the interview. At some point in the night we brought out the calculator and figured out what the pay amounted to, and it was then the mood began to sour. The wage was essentially the same as what I was already making and since that was half the reason I was looking for work we began to wonder if this really was the job that was the answer to our prayers.

Since it was rather late and I wasn't sure how I wanted to proceed I decided to get a few character references of my own and called a friend who is an employee with the company. No red flags, no yellow flags even, so now we are down to the pay issue being the only thing holding me back from enthusiastically jumping at the job and submitting my resignation. Saturday morning I called friends and family for counsel. All were in agreement that I should make a counter offer, feeling I am not only worth the money but that without it we would have to continue to put children on hold.

I decided the best course of action was to research pay scales for the job both nationally and regionally. Armed with said data I could then make an intelligent and non-greedy counter-offer and hopefully not lose my chance at a good job. Since it was Saturday and the prospective employer would be out most of Monday I decided I would send an email to begin the process, but before I could sit down and compose the message I got a call from a co-worker. Fearing we might have had a server outage I hastened to answer and figure out what was wrong.

At the time of the phone call I had a new email in my inbox, and while answering the phone I managed to see it was from the very man I was about to compose an email. I had time to quickly scan it and noticed there were numerals and figures in the email; I was intrigued. The phone call itself, however, was even more intriguing, for my friend had called to see if I knew what had happened at work on Friday. As it turns out I must have left too early for I missed the boss telling his assistant appraiser to not come into work for a couple of weeks. This was bad. The day before the tele-marketer was given the same message. Both of us were thinking the same thing, the company is failing. I quickly filled my co-worker in on my job interview (which he knew I had, being the only one I told). At this point certain confidential information was leaked in my direction indicating that my position might be dissolved in the next two weeks anyway.

At this point I had already made up my mind to accept the job even if I couldn't get a couple more dollars an hour, and now my decision was confirmed. After hanging up I read the email then picked my jaw up off the floor and suppressed a face disfiguring grin. The boss had second-thoughts about his offer having realized my abilities as described in my resume and on display with my company's website were greater than his anticipation; he amended his offer adding the two dollars per hour I was looking for and promised to add another dollar in six months if I'm as good as he now suspects.

I have a new job here in Salem with Select Impressions starting November 27th. I gave my two week's notice this weekend and now face that uncomfortable transition time. It will probably be months before I feel comfortable and settled again, but in the meantime we rejoice that God has head and answered our prayers. We are closer to starting our family