As my (second) senior year of college was winding down I felt pretty good about my future. I had a month and a half to go before my final set of college finals, I had just gotten married, things were good. My wife had another year of school still, this gave me plenty of time to find a job at a relaxed pace. But interesting stories don’t happen when things go to plan.

At the time we were living in the cheapest two bedroom box apartment we could find. Despite the price the apartment wasn’t entirely without virtue, it was a short direct walk to campus, uh, and it had four walls, they even had some insulation in them. On a cold Wednesday morning in November I wandered into the bathroom as one does and noticed a puddle on top of my toilet, well that’s interesting usually you find puddles under toilets. As I was settling in to contemplate how this came to pass a drop of water landed on my head, looked up, and saw water leaking out of the fan housing in the ceiling. Time to call maintenance, sigh. We had a plumber come by on Thursday, he looked at our ceiling for all of 30 seconds, and then headed to the unit upstairs.

Saturday came and went without note.

Sunday morning we headed out to go grocery shopping for the week. On the way out found an envelope taped to our front door, interesting. It was a thirty day no fault eviction, our building was deemed unsafe for habitation. Whatever was going on upstairs must have been bad. This isn’t great but we’ve got a month to get new housing, this is fine. Oh, but finals start in just over 5 weeks, this in fact is not fine.

A friend of ours had an extra room in her apartment that my wife could stay in while she finished school, I however would have to find some place for myself to live. I sure as hell wasn’t going back to live with my parents, so on top of school and moving and general stress I started looking for jobs with a furious motivation. I applied for all the entry level tech jobs within 100 miles, got a few interviews but nothing panned out.

Finals week arrived, I took my exams, mostly passed, but still didn’t have a new plan. This was all back in the day mind you, so I saw a random post on Slashdot, I don’t even remember what it was about but the author’s signature include a job posting for a tech support gig in New Jersey. I didn’t want to move that far but I was pretty desperate by this point. I asked my wife if she would veto a job in New Jersey, she said no, so I applied, what’s the worst that could happen they’d turn me down too. Dear reader forgive me, I was young and unimaginative.

The week came and went with no response. We packed up and drove the 8 hours to my in-laws house in Idaho. Cell service was passible, but the house itself only had dial even though it was the 40th year of our unix epoch. The machine shop had broadband, but no heat, and was about a half a mile from the house. So of course as soon as we arrived, I got an email about scheduling a phone screen and online tech test. I took the phone screen in the house and did well enough. For the tech test I ventured down to the machine shop. Trying to concentrate in a drafty machine shop in December is not exactly ideal conditions, but I did good enough to move on with the process.

They wanted to fly me out for an onsite interview on December 27th, this was going to cut into spending the holidays with family, but I was desperate so I was in no position to say no. On Christmas day I got a follow up email, the Philadelphia airport was closed due to snow and they were going to push back the interview a few days, I was now slated to interview on January 2nd. I was scheduled to be in New Jersey for three days, two to interview, and one more to apartment hunt or tourist depending on how the first two days went.

The most remarkable thing about the interview was during day two everything came to a halt when a FedEx truck rolled up to the front door, everyone filed out of the building to unload. I paused for a moment before being asked if I was coming to help unload, I was a bit taken aback, I was wearing a suit, not exactly truck unloading attire. But when in Rome I guess? I hung my jacket on a chair and set to carrying boxes of servers into the lab area. I guess that was the right thing to do, they offered me the job later that afternoon. My first day would be in 10 days, on one hand this is good because I was on a tight timeline to begin with, on the other hand this is a really tight, tight deadline

The next day the owner and I piled into his truck to go look at apartments. We looked at a few, found one near by that was adequate, headed back to the rental office and put in an application. When it came time to pay the deposit my soon to be boss assured me he had this covered and produced an envelope of cash from his jacket. Uh, ok, I guess that’s a thing that just happened. Now I had a place to live now I just need to figure out how to get all my stuff here.

I was flying back to the west coast that evening, but still needed to get to the Philadelphia Airport first. My new coworkers came through for me, one of them lived in Philadelphia and commuted daily so I could totally ride along with him. I wasn’t at all familiar with the lay of the land, and had no idea that there was a couple mile long segment of completely unlit roads passing the Atlantic City Airport on the way to the express way. As we started down this specific road I was certain I was being taken in to the woods to be chopped up with an axe by this guy I’d met for the first time less than 12 hours ago. A few tense minutes later we emerged into the glow of the expressway lights.

Back on the west coast I hustled to contract to have my car shipped across country, I wasn’t crazy enough to drive all of I80 in the middle of winter. All the car shipping companies were clear, the passenger compartment needed to be clear of stuff. But the trunk was mine to fill as I wished. I loaded up a microwave, the best free laptop I could beg from my friends, an air mattress, and my clothes. Then loaded my car on to a carrier truck, it was slated to arrive in a week. With that all set I bought airline tickets for myself.

A few days before flying out to New Jersey I got a call from the company that was shipping my car, good news they arrived a few days early, bad news they couldn’t be bothered to drop it off at the intended destination but there was a rest stop on the expressway. This was not good news at all, I wasn’t there to pick up my car. So I scrambled to irc to enlist my coworkers aid to pick up my car, thankfully I was able to find a volunteer to pick up my car and drive it to the office. Disaster averted.

I finally flew back to new Jersey, took the train to where my car was dropped off and then crashed in my new apartment for the first time. On Monday I thanked the crew that had rescued my car and was informed “Oh, yeah, no problem, your car is pretty fun to drive, I did like 90 all the way down the expressway”. This shocked my poor west coast sensibilities, I got used to New Jersey driving in time.

I had successfully avoided moving back in with my parents, and it only cost me the low price of being stuck in New Jersey. I did eventually escape and over all it was a learning experience personally and professionally, but I don’t think I’ll be going back if I can avoid it.

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Filed under: Auto-biographical - @ 2022-12-23 15:00

Tags: FridayNightStoryTime