Cruel Cruel Missoula - Part II

As previously mentioned, I'm having a helluva time with the job market in Missoula. So, I was pretty thrilled when I got a temp job at a non-profit writers' association. Writers! I love writers! I wanna BE a writer, right?

Most of the time I worked with "Steph" who I liked immediately. She was very friendly and left me to myself most of the day to work on the project I was assigned, which was very interesting since it involved the writers and photographers who belonged to the organization. Like many here in Missoula, Steph was all about the outdoors -- skiing every weekend,hiking the backcountry whenever possible. My god the people here make me feel like a Weeble Wobble. (Weeble Wobbles wobble but they don't fall down!).

As time went on, and I did my best to do a good job, I was told that they had a position that was open. It was only four hours a day, but it had the "potential" to go full-time. It sounded great. Finally, a job! A good job! An interesting job! HOORAY!

Now, it wasn't a perfect job by any means. Just by being half-time, it meant I'd have to get a second job somewhere else. Also, the organization was going through a time of chaos (gee, have I heard this tune before?) due to some internal conflicts. And finally, the entire organizational staff consisted of Steph, another nice woman as the editor, and the boss, Kyle. Up until this point, I had had little contact with Kyle, but he seemed nice enough. Yeah, nice....

Kyle put me through an hour-long interview regarding the job. He told me that he was interviewing another person as well, but that since I already knew the organization, I was the front-runner. Then Kyle began to reveal the aspect of his character which would torture me for the next two weeks....

In one breath, Kyle discussed the many issues and conflicts the organization was facing, first and foremost being a lack of funding which had shrunk the staff from five to three. Due to this, he thought the job may go full-time, but you know, he couldn't guarantee it. I would be expected to take over Steph's job, a job that all admitted was much too much work for her to do in an eight-hour shift (although it was revealed that she almost never stayed less than ten hours at a time), during my own, four-hour shift. I would have to work hard, real hard. And due to the fact that I was still tied to my temp agency, I would continue to make my single-digit wage for the next few months.

It wasn't the most promising job offer I'd ever received.

But it didn't stop there, despite Kyle offering me up a big steaming plate of MAYBE. In the next breath, he began to tell me that despite all this, what he wanted from me was an agreed, sealed, guaranteed, promised, signed-in-blood VOW that I would never ever ever ever quit.

I was stunned. He wanted a 100% guarantee, but he could offer me none in return? I liked the place, and was happy for the offer, but WHO can give such a promise?

But the truth is that Missoula has demoralized me, and on more than one occassion, I've thought, "Why do I hold on to this 'dream' of having a job I love, a job I can look forward to every morning, a job that excites me? We're in some real financial trouble, why can't I just be like every other normal person and just get a fucking job and stop being a princess about it?"

Yet, in the end, I refused to sign over my first-born child. Deep down I knew that his offer wasn't fair, and if by some Act of God I was finally offered a coveted job at the University of Montana, I didn't want to jeopardize that. I believe in loyalty and I believe in my own word, and I just couldn't tell him a flat out lie. I told him the truth, I would be happy to get the job, I had no intention of leaving, and I would work hard. But I would not guarantee I'd never leave. I also told him that I would go ahead and get another job as well, since I couldn't survive on his half-day wages. He was startled and panicked, and told me, "But, you can't do that, 'cause there will be days I'll need you for 2/3 time, maybe even some busy times here and there where I'll need you for the full eight hours!" Um, okay.

So, technically, I was not really offered the job. Never officially. The following week, while still temping there, Kyle gave me another one of his clear-as-mud messages. He stood there and began to tell me he was no longer interviewing anyone else, I was the one (hooray!), and I swear to god, in the next breath, he said, "But we'll keep going with this temp thing and just see how it goes."

Huh?

It gets better.

A few days after that, as Steph was earnestly training me to replace her (her last day rapidly approaching), Kyle talked to me again, asked if I was still interested in continuing "with this," and for about the fifth time, I told him, yes, of course I was. He told me again how this job would continue until around June (but now he added "or July") when it should go full-time. And then to my utter astonishment he said, "Oh, and you know, maybe at that time we'll just open the job up to the public."

All I could reply with was stunned silence.

He continued, "Oh, but you know, you'll have been working here that whole time, so you'll already know the job, so you'll probably be the one who gets it, of course."

The coward that I was faked a smile and nodded and went, "Mmm hmm," when what I wanted to say was, "WHAT THE HELL, YOU PRICK!?" At that moment, the loyalty I had felt toward this job, and the desire to stick it out at the crappy wage and low hours, evaporated. But it wouldn't be the first time I felt kicked in the gut. The temp agency woman I worked with kept contacting me and Kyle trying to figure out what the hell was going on. What could I tell her? I didn't understand myself. And everytime she emailed Kyle, he would bring me in and say, "Well, you know, you should deal with this, you should be the one to talk to her, because, you know, you work for her and all" and he'd proceed to tell me what exactly I should say, adding the occassional, "But don't tell her I told you that!" Hmm.

Just a day or two after that, Kyle closed his door and had a very long conversation. This immediately got my antenna up since that is almost never done. Like I mentioned, it's a tiny office with just a few people in it, and so silent that every cough, whisper, and particularly, every phone call, is heard, word-for-word. And I have heard more than one DOOZY of a phone call go on there, and there had never been any privacy before. I had sat there as a temp hearing it all. So now that Kyle had the door closed, I was suspicious. Paranoid, yes, but also suspicious. For some reason I just felt that he was talking to another applicant, and I am no clairvoyant by any means.

It turned out my paranoia was absolutely correct. The next morning I came to work where Steph was already there (she normally arrived at work at 6am each morning to "catch up"). She looked straight into my eyes and told me we needed to talk. And whan ensued was a 45 minute conversation, where Steph told me how much she liked me, and how she couldn't live with herself if she didn't give me the whole truth. As you can guess, most of it centered around Kyle and his mismanagement skills. "I really like you. You're smart, you're nice, you work hard, and you're way over-qualified for this position. I just have to warn you. I know you really need the work right now, and I'm not going to tell you to quit or anything, but use this job. Use it as a stepping stone to the next thing. Get out as soon as you can."

There was a lot more to it, including her confirmation of Kyle's closed-door conversation, much more discussion about Kyle as supervisor, and what Steph had basically suffered through until she got the point where she was now, just getting the fuck out. I had no idea that she had nothing on the horizon, no new job to go to. "How will you survive?" I asked in astonishment.

"I don't know. I haven't even had time to sit and think and figure it out yet," she said sadly. I felt bad for her, bad for myself, but at the same time, felt a wave of elation. Just a few days before I had suddenly gotten two Two TWO calls from the university from two totally different departments who had found my resume in the university's temp pool that I had registered with nearly two months ago. Suddenly, I went from almost no prospects, to two interviews exactly where I wanted to work. But I had felt horribly guilty that I might actually be going ahead and quitting the job I had said I had no intention of leaving. Steph's words set me free.

There is a happy ending to this story, my gentle reader. Here I am, today, where I have had my two interviews at the university, an hour apart. The bad news is that they are both temporary, but there is much more good news. 1) They both pay more than what I'm making at the writers' association now, 2) One of them offered me a job on the SPOT! *cheer*, and 3) as they both said, this was the foot in the door of the university, and getting a job after their respective positions ended would be no problem. "I know a lot of people at this university," one woman smiled and winked at me during the interview. I wanted to kiss her.

So, all that's left for me now is to somehow tell Kyle that he can take this job and shove it. And despite my rage in my previous post on revenge, the truth is, I'm a real wuss. Though I'd love to march up to him tomorrow and tell him he was a colossal prick who strung me along and stabbed me in the back, I'm actually terrified of telling him, and NOT looking forward to that awkward moment where I have to have him sign my temp agency time sheet. *gulp* But really, there is no choice in the matter....

Well, I could always do what you're supposed to do, which is let your temp agency do it for you, but that seems even more cowardly than I feel I really am. We'll see. Either way, I am OUTTA HERE! Hooray!

And in the end, I am stunned by yet another inexplicable experience in Missoula. Like I told Beau, I feel like there's something going on in this city I don't get, something I'm missing, some secret that I haven't learned yet. Beau was stunned since he had been having a similar view. It's not exactly Stepford, but it's not normal. All I can say for now is...

What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On. In. This. City?

I'm stumped. It's confirmed, I live in Bizarro World.