Hello!
So, so many things to write about, but I need to tell you about the employment situation right now and then I’ll get back to writing about all of the things. I’ve been taking notes on my iphone and making story bullets (including meeting a REAL cowboy and getting him into the hot tub during my girls weekend last weekend!!!).
Anyway, The Cutie Pie Company verbally offered me a job yesterday! After weeks of video interviews, a drive down to their city to interview, face-to-face meetings with 5 people on the staff, another video interview with the CEO, sending them my references (and them actually speaking to all of my references), they gave me an offer.
That’s great, right?
But cutting to the bottom line, they are about $20K off the mark on base salary, they didn’t offer me any relocation and said that since they’ve been burned before that they wouldn’t do it, they don’t have a set bonus structure, zero retirement plan (401K or similar), and still telling me that I’d have to “prove myself” before I can take on certain job functions that I’ve been doing for 15+ years.
After the verbal offer, they told me if I had any questions that I should get back with the president. I came back with an email stating what I was looking for (higher salary, moving reimbursement, 3 weeks vacation, the usual insurance, and stock options).
The Pres came back with: no budging on the salary - that’s the best and final offer (which also means that I’d likely never, ever get a raise since they told me that their best offer was actually $20 - $40K over their budget!!), they would offer me $5K moving expenses that would have to be paid back if I didn’t last a year with the company, stock options AFTER a year of “proving myself”, a bonus plan that’s basically at the CEO’s whim (not structured), paid medical but no dental and no retirement (which I want to do in 10 years). Oh, and they did say I could have 3 weeks vacay.
Then I went back to Glassdoor.com to look (again) at the employee reviews and I read them very, very closely this time. And I read between the lines as well. They are having a HUGE issue with employee retention, and it’s all due to the CEO, who is young and the Mean Girl environment, which I can totally see. And while every good review said that everyone there is very hard-working, the bad reviews also showed me that they are taken advantage of with regards to taking time off, even to go to the doctor! I don’t know what would happen if I told them that I was a cancer survivor and need time off to go to my many, many doctor appointments.
And the thing is, I would LOVE to work at a company like this…young, the vibe of a hip, boutique agency, lots of stuff happening, FUN product…but I don’t have the bandwidth for drama, mean girls, cliques, people talking behind my back, being discouraged to take a lunch break (I noticed that nobody left the office at noon when I was there - nor did the company offer me any kind of lunch, even though I was there for 3 hours over the lunch hour - nor did they offer to reimburse my ~200 mile mileage each way put on my car).
I know I sound kind of princess-y, don’t I? But I’ve worked too hard to go down to the bottom, which is what it sounds like.
I told Best Bud about all of this as she was one of my references they’d called and at first, she said I could likely make it all work, but the more we talked the more she was like, there’s no incentive to uproot my whole life for less money than what I was making and a LOT less support. I’d be much further from my support system and my stability. I think it’s one thing if I was a lot younger than I am, but this feels wayyyyy too risky right now.
Thoughts? Am I making a mistake by not being adventurous enough?
Ideas?
GS
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