I’ve Got a Job!! Oh, Wait…

My cell phone rang.

I had spent most of the day filling out job applications, and had just finished polishing off a cover letter to a public relations agency in San Francisco.

The screen shows a 707 area code, one that seems vaguely familiar.

I answer it warily. “Hello?”

“Hi, Samantha, this is Solage Calistoga. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” I say, sitting back in my computer chair.

“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you, but I wanted to know, have you found a job yet?”

“No, I haven’t.” I started to get excited.

“Well, I have a full-time operator position open for you. Would you like it?”

I paused in surprise. “Y-yes, of course I would! Thank you!”

“Of course! The job starts next Tuesday, when you’ll begin your training, and we’ll send you a welcome email detailing all of the information by tomorrow.”

“Oh…I have a trip scheduled with a flight next week. I leave on Thursday.”

“Oh, well we’ll just give you those days off. It’ll be fine. So we’ll see you Tuesday?”

“Yes of course! Thank you!” As I hung up the phone, I did a victory dance around the small space between my couch and my bed, then moseyed into the office where my mom was furiously working on correspondence from the school where she works.

“So…I just got a job.”

My mom looked up in shock. “What??”

“Solage just called and they have a full-time operator position for me. The HR director asked me if I wanted it, and I said yes.”

“That’s great, baby! We have to start looking for apartments for you and get you moved up this weekend! Oh wait…how much are you getting paid?”

I stopped rejoicing for a moment. “I don’t know, she didn’t say. She said they would send me an email by tomorrow.”

“Well, you need to find out,” she said. “You won’t even know how expensive of an apartment you can afford. Especially in Napa Valley.”

I knew she was right. Napa Valley’s crappiest apartments start at $750/mo., if you get lucky, and those are usually apartments above people’s garages or next to their houses in Angwin. Most, however, start around $950-$1000 a month. And again, those are the crappy ones.

I wrote her an email back asking about the salary.

When I received the email back informing me of my salary, the excitement of getting a job completely drained out of my system. The numbers read “$12/hr.”

My mom quickly drew in a breath. “That’s not enough. Especially for the cost of living up there. You need to ask her for a higher salary, or else you’re going to be scraping to get by, maybe not even be able to make your rent every month.”

For the next few days, I struggled over whether I would accept the job as it was, or whether I’d ask for a salary raise. I knew that there was the possibility that Solage would not raise my salary, and I would be back to square one. Finally, I emailed the HR director, letting her know that relocating and living in the area would be nearly impossible on the salary, and gave them a minimum of $15/hr.

I waited through a discussion between the HR director and the guest services manager. The HR director called me back, letting me know that they had examined the budget and that the highest salary they could offer was $13.50/hr.

With a lot of heaviness in my heart, I told her I had to think about it, but knowing that I would decline the job. Later on in the evening, I wrote her an email thanking her for working with me, but that I would be declining the job.

It’s hard to do the thing that’s best for yourself when you don’t feel like it is. I was so excited to be on my own, have my own apartment, and be working rather than not having anything to do most days. But I knew that I deserved better, and hoped that something better would come along…soon.

Patience is a Virtue.

Waiting.

When you’re job hunting, you do a lot of waiting.

Every time you send a job application, you wait for however long it takes before you give up hope that they will ever respond to you.

It could be two-three weeks, a month, and you haven’t heard anything. Do you give up? Do you try again?

For most jobs, I’m usually thinking, “Well, I didn’t really want that job anyway.”

Some jobs, it’s a little more painful. Especially if it was a PR agency, a job where I would get to write or copy-edit, or anything having to do with photography.

Waiting is even worse when you’ve already had an interview and two weeks later, you still haven’t heard, even though you should have known by the middle of the following week.

I sent a follow-up email to Solage, thanking the human resources director and the guest services manager for the interview, letting them know how much I enjoyed our conversation, as well as reinforcing my skills and attributes that had been discussed.

A month or so later, I closed my post office box in Angwin, where I had gone to college. I had been holding out until it expired to see if I would be able to move back up. In my forwarded mail, I received a postcard letting me know that they were pursuing other candidates.

Well, at the time, that’s what they thought.

Spontaneity and The Second Interview.

I’m sitting at Josh’s house, still in my pajamas and hoodie, playing Rock Band on characters with green and purple hair and madder guitar/drum skills than either he or I had, when my cell phone rang.

Josh paused the game and hopped over to where my phone was about to buzz off the TV tray the Xbox sits on. He looked at the screen and said, “I think you’re going to want to answer this.”

He throws me the phone,  and I pick it up. “Hello?”

“Hi, this is Solage Calistoga. May I speak to Samantha Owens please?”

“This is Samantha.”

“Hi! I was going over your application, and we have a full-time operator position open. We would like you to interview for it. When can you come in?”

I was a bit flabbergasted. I hadn’t heard a peep from anywhere I’d applied in the Valley until now. “How about today?”

“Oh that’s wonderful!  How about today at 4:00?”

“Sure, that sounds great.” I looked at Josh in a half-panic, since I hadn’t brought my car up this trip.

“Oh good! Thanks for being so flexible. So we’ll see you at 4:00, then?”

“Of course, I’ll see you then.” I hung up the phone, shocked at the whole chain of events. Five minutes ago I’d been playing Rock Band and now I had a job interview that I needed to get ready for. Good thing I’d brought my trusty blue job-hunting dress.

We both frenzied to shower and get ready before we needed to make the fifteen minute drive to Calistoga. I left him sitting under one of the awnings in a wicker chair to relax while I walked over to Human Resources.

I walked in the door, said hello to the secretary, and took a seat at the table with the applications and a brochure about the resort. The human resources director and the guest services manager came and greeted me, and brought me into the director’s office.

I felt a lot more relaxed at this interview, considering it’d been unexpected and I’d had very little time to freak out about it. They asked me questions about college and my classes I’d taken, and about my work experience.

When I informed them that I’d been working jobs since I was eleven years old, they both seemed impressed. “You really know a lot about this working thing,” the director remarked, leaning back in her chair studying me. I nodded, and said that I had a lot of work experience but most of it was at school or at summer camp, but it didn’t mean it was any less valuable.

The interview ended with the director telling me that their main goal was to help the customers that come to the resort to have a great time, and it is our job to help them have the best vacation they possibly can have.  I agreed with her, giving her my own spiel about it, and I watched their faces, hoping that I would make this last impression on them. I was hoping that she’d give me the key to moving back to Napa Valley, to the keys to my apartment, to breakfast at Dean and Deluca, to coffee at Napa Valley Roasting Company.

The director and the manager both stood and shook my hand. “If you have any questions, just give me a call,” said the director, showing me out of the office.

I let out a giant breath that I didn’t realize I’d been holding once I got back to where Josh was sitting.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“I think it went well,” I said slowly. “I hope I get the job. Or one of these jobs, at least.”