NJM #1 - Interviewing in Utah in These Foolish Things

Hello. It’s that time of year again! How many years have we been NoJoMo-ing now? So, so many. Too many to count. But I do love November because it forces me to write.

So, for the month of November, not only do I plan to write daily, I’m also working on no added sugar and no alcohol (which should be easy since I’m barely drinking anymore, but I did let myself indulge a few times last month knowing I was going to do this during November).

Today I’m writing from a super cuuuuuute coffee shop in Provo, Utah. It is filled with beautiful BYU students and some hipster kinda looking people. Everything, and I do mean everything here is at least a little bit pious - like this coffee shop is cool, but it is clearly dropping tiny religious hints, like bible verse numbers written out in that pretty millennial font on the coffee menu chalkboard.

My trip’s been weird.

Flew in on Sunday. Three hour delay due to broken plane, but they finally found another one and we were off. It was my first flight since the pandemic, and it didn’t hurt that I was upgraded. I masked up on the plane, but I haven’t been masked since so who knows what good that did me.

Regardless, a fine flight into beautiful Salt Lake City, even though my exploring was cut short. Spent about an hour and a half at the Botanical Gardens and then went to this super groovy Mexican restaurant called the Red Iguana. The gardens fed my soul and the Mexican mole filled my belly. It was a cool afternoon and early evening.

Then the drive down to Provo, which blew my mind - the beauty of the mountain range. It is absolutely stunning here, but…

There are a lot of buts. The main one being I don’t want to move here. I really, really don’t. The culture shock is REAL.

Salt Lake City is one thing, but Provo…is another thing altogether.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone is incredibly nice, but everyone is also Mormon. Like, everyone. That’s no shade to Mormons, it’s just that I would never, ever fit in the community here. I’d have to seek out the Black Sheep (I found one of those in a park yesterday - I’ll have to tell you about it later).

But first, I need to tell you this.

I just finished a most-of-the-day interview at the home decor company. It was fine - met some great-seeming people. They were super welcoming and treated me well, but the office is woefully out of date and in serious, serious need of updates. And yes, they do manufacturing at their location, but MAN, so freaking UNinspirational. That was a big strike, but not one that would make me say no to a salary with insurance.

Met all of operations team and the execs, and they were beyond nice. I was enthusiastic and answered questions and even handed out some great questions for the team, but there was one exec, the finance guy who was SHOCKINGLY handsome and super cool and it threw me. I drew a blank when he asked me a couple of questions about my personal life (hobbies, etc.), but recovered eventually. Barely. Damn, he is unsettlingly fucking fine.

Sadly, nobody says “fuck” here.

At the end of the several hours long interview and a lovely lunch, I went back to the office and sat down with the VP and CEO and had a chat, recapping some of the bullet points of our meeting, and then they asked point blank what I think of the area and what my feelings are about moving there.

And I couldn’t lie and say that I was raring to move to Provo, but I told them that I think the opportunity is fantastic but that I don’t think I could uproot my life and move there. I reiterated that I’d always been transparent about that, and they both agreed and then I gave them my thoughts about staying in [my city] and working remotely and how that could be very beneficial to them since they want me to travel to customers and I’d be able to get around the country very, very easily by staying somewhere that has direct flights to every other city in the US.

They were cool and not totally surprised. It truly is a HUGE move. We left it at that for now.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but even if I worked there for a three month trial period, maybe they could see that me being in a major metropolitan market could be beneficial for them.

I’m having dinner with the hiring manager and his wife in less than an hour.

This is hard and I’ve had no sleep (the hotel is the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed in, which has kept me up at night). Also, it’s supposed to snow tomorrow so I changed my flight home to a 6am flight. I’m running on fumes. Not even caffeine is working.

More to follow, but my brain is fried.

Signing off for today,
GS