They pooped in the pool…

I had an interesting interview today. It was with a professional photographic supply shop which is a national chain located in Peoria.

The position required 20 weeks of travel this year and more the following year to the East Coast, acting as a travelling network technician. This isn’t a bad thing, but I didn’t really want to start out a marriage with 20 weeks of not being around. In the weeks when I wasn’t travelling, I would lend a hand in redeveloping their website and troubleshooting their local machines. For all of these responsibilities and the fact that the interview went quite well, I expected to have an offer in a week or so at least, and then a tough decision to make.

Apparently, things went so well that the interviewer actually called me on the way back home to Pekin (less than 20 minute drive) to tell me he had emailed me an offer. I was pretty excited to hear this, as it conjured up images of me rolling around naked in money until I saw their offer when I got home… $23,500.00 per year + benefits + bonuses = $30,604 per year. You are correct, that is $30 and not $50 that you’re seeing there. If they had offered roughly double their compensation, I might have considered it. Might. It was nearly offensive. On second thought, screw that. It was totally offensive.

So I called the guy back to tell him that I made that much cash as a student worker at WIU and he’d have to get at least to $45,000 for me to consider it. He said it was all the leftover money from the agreement they signed and they would not be able to raise the offer, so I declined. I left the door open to do some consulting work for them in the future but that was mostly a hollow threat because their website is atrocious. It seems ridiculous to me to turn down an offer when I have no job, but I can’t bring myself to start a job on the pretense that I’d be a full time employee and just quit on them in a month to get a better paying gig. Plus, I have a MASTERS DEGREE. I didn’t go to school for an extra year and a half to get an offer that they’d extend to an Associates Degree.

Regardless, I now have the honor of getting the most hilarious offer ever. Huzzah!