Monday, November 10, 2008

Being where we're supposed to be

Flash back to 2 years ago.
We lived in Texas and were miserable. Kcbrat worked for AMR as a flight dispatcher. A job that had no room for advancement, no way to move up a ladder, because there was no ladder in her job field.
In early May of 2007, she found a listing online for a job with Jeppesen in Denver CO. Still as a flight dispatcher, but not within the commercial airline industry. This would be a very good thing since the commercial airline industry was and is still suffering major difficulties. She applied for the job, made it through the phone interview, the face to face interview, and by the end of June, was told to expect a phone call from HR with an offer. 24 hours after she received that message, the dispatch dept was moved internally, and placed under a different dept head. This move also caused a hiring freeze. No one had any idea when the freeze would be lifted.

The promise of leaving Texas had motivated both of us, and the search began again for a new job.

In July, she applied to Kodak in Rochester NY. She made it through the phone interview, and flew out for the face to face interview. She did very well in both interviews and was sent home with gifts! Yes, gifts, a ceramic coffee mug, and an acrylic plaque commemorating 50 years of Kodak's something (I cant remember what now). They seemed to feel she had the job in the bag. They only had one other applicant to interview. Halfway through Aug we learned that other applicant got the job.

The 2nd week of Sept, she found another job to apply for. After the phone interview, the 3rd week of Oct had her flying to Seattle, for a final interview with Boeing. They were very positive, but the following week they called to inform her that she missed out on the job because she didn't have enough international exp.

The end of Oct saw her applying to Frontier Airlines, again a Denver company. The phone interview went well, as did the face to face when she flew out, again, to Denver in late Nov. She never got a final word from them, but that could be because they were too busy trying to save their own jobs since Frontier laid off half the dispatch dept and filed for bankruptcy in April.

While still in the interview process with Frontier, she found a job listing in Wilmington Oh. ABX, owned by DHL.
She applied with them in mid Nov, and this time did not have to fly out for the interview because we were at my family's home only an hour and a half away when she got the call to come for a face to face.
She got that job.... sort of. See, they had a pilot on the dispatch desk that wanted to go back to flying, and as soon as he transfered back to the cockpit, she would start. Except he decided not to transfer after all. And the company decided that maybe they didn't need more dispatchers. And yesterday it was in the news that DHL is, for all intents and purposes, closing that company and putting 8000 people out of work.

Now, while still going through the process at ABX, she also applied to Skybus. After the phone interview, she decided not to take that job for various reasons. They went belly up in April.

Delta Air Elite offered her a position in early Jan, but she turned down that offer for lack of pay and bennies. They were dissolved to help pave the way for the Delta/Northwest merger.

In late March of this year, she received an email from Jeppesen. The hiring freeze had been lifted, but because it had been so long after her interviews she would have to go through the process again. So, again she filled out the application. The end of April saw her once again going through the interviews. May 5th she was offered the job. AMR received her 2 wks notice that day as well. The next morning saw her on a plane to Denver for a mad scramble 3 day apt search. We had 3 weeks to pack up 8 years of life in a 3 bedroom ranch house, and get it halfway across the country to a storage unit and a 2 bedroom apt. Her new job started May 26th.
My stash is buried deep within a storage unit from hell. I may never see it again. I don't care.
Denver is where we were supposed to be. The PTBs kept trying to get us here... just took the scenic route I guess.

3 comments:

Girl Meets Needle said...

Congratulations on finally finding somewhere to really call home! And congrats to KC on getting that job!

Jerry said...

Sounds like it all worked out how it should be.

Yarn Tails said...

Very long journey with a light at the end!