So, I applied for a job... (long OP)

…and got it! And now I’m kind of upset.

How can this be? The backstory: I am a Federal employee for an agency - let’s call it “Homing and City Development”. I was working in Ohio until 2 years ago, when they closed that office and offered us our choice of 5 other cities to which we could move, none of which were cities we wanted. Out of our limited choices, we opted for a very large city in Colorado that I’ll call “Peytonville”, because of the apparent requirement that you need to wear a Peyton Manning jersey if you live here.

So we took the job in Peytonville, only to find that the real estate market was an insane seller’s market and our budget of $250k was horribly inadequate here. We moved to a crappy house in a mediocre neighborhood, made especially crappy since my wife has MS, is disabled and the suitability of the house really matters to her health.

I started my job and found that compared to my previous job, it sucked majorly even though it was theoretically the same position, with all the good things about my old job replaced by a Bizarro equivalent. I used to have a few days of field work every month that I enjoyed - that’s gone. I used to get almost no phone calls; now I have to take calls from a call center all day every Friday, which is a huge stressor for an introverted phone hater like me. The one thing I liked was my supervisor, who was a beacon of reasonableness in a sea of red tape. There were 2 supervisors, I knew my guy would always have my back, while the other guy is a total pointy-haired who not only didn’t have his employee’s backs, but thought their backs were only useful for pushing them under the bus at every opportunity. So, of course the good supervisor left in September, since he’s not stupid, and now I am under the bad supervisor.

We had already decided to try and move back to the Ohio part of the Midwest, or at least as close as we could manage, way back in March. When the good supervisor left, I decided to take more decisive action and contacted some people with my agency in a large Western Missouri city that we’ll call “Royals’ Titletown”. It wasn’t the ideal city, but was the closest (to Ohio) viable city that had jobs I might be able to get with my agency. Well, they told me some jobs might be opening up there in January, and directed me to their supervisor. In early November, I spoke to their supervisor and he expressed interest in me transferring there, so we began the (not guaranteed) process of asking for a hardship transfer (based on my wife’s issues; we had already gotten HQ approval for it in March but there were no positions then).

Since then, we’ve been mired in red tape, made worse by trying to do it at this time of year; various people have been hard or impossible to contact. Some are just not calling back. I never gave up on looking on USAJOBS at other agencies; I had had an interview in June but thought I could have done better in the interview, so I decided to apply to a couple of jobs that were listed, even though they were in cities not under consideration (Omaha and Tulsa).

Last week, one of my old supervisors called me to tell me he had been contacted by the Tulsa office (of, let’s say, the not-Navy Corps Of Guys Who Have The Same Job Title As Dilbert And Casey Jones, or the NNCOGWHTSJTADACJ) for a reference. So i was expecting to be called for a job interview. That call came this morning, except it wasn’t for an interview. It was to tell me I’d been selected for the position! Without an interview! I managed to get them to give me until Monday to give them an answer.

But the more I thought about the whole situation, the more I became frustrated, because I consider the NNCOGWHTSJTADACJ to be the single best Federal agency to work for, probably on the opposite end of the spectrum from Homing and City Development, and the job itself is close to my ideal. If it had been in a place we had EVER considered I would already have said yes.

So now we are in limbo in trying to get to where we’d like to be, but could take a great job in a location we don’t want (keeping in mind that neither of us has ever been in Oklahoma). Oy. To add to the general feeling of chaos, the housing in Royals’ Titletown is kind of limited for a disabled person, because they apparently LOVE their walkout basements and basement garages there, while Tulsa’s housing is darn near ideal, with really nice, handicapped-friendly houses plentiful for around $150k; our 250k budget would almost get us an estate there. Crap. I never thought I would get this upset over being OFFERED a job.

(TL;DR version: We’re trying desperately to get out of where we are, but now have the choice of waiting until who-knows-when to get to where we want to be, IF it even happens - or taking a great job in a place we don’t want to be, and haven’t even visited).

Since you’ve never been to Tulsa, how do you know you don’t want to be there? To me, it’s a no-brainer, but answering someone else’s dilemma is always easier than figuring out your own, right? I don’t know how old you are, but unless you’re really close to retirement and looking to end up in a particular area, I’d say go for it. You might find you like Tulsa. And rent instead of buying at first, so if you hate it, you can start looking again and you won’t be stuck with trying to sell a house at the same time.

You’re welcome. :wink:

My wife is really the one who is opposed to it. She has friends in KC (oops, that should be “Royals Titletown”), even though they aren’t really close friends, and KC is about 6 hours away from her family, while Tulsa is (runs to Google Maps) 7 hours and 21 minutes (which seems awfully quick for 473 miles). Wow, that’s not the difference I thought it would be.

Another issue is (and I didn’t put this in the OP, so I wouldn’t expect you to know this) that we’ve already moved 4 times in 16 years, and we thought Cincinnati was where we would stay forever. She really wants this next move to be the last one, and I don’t blame her.

Selling the house won’t be a problem. We have friends who want it. Renting is a problem because we have quite a few pets; combine that with her disability needs and it’s a non-starter.

I agree. Go pay a visit to Tulsa before you decide you don’t like it. I’ve never been there, so can’t advise on it, but at the very least, you need to see the place before you commit to it. Tell your prospective new employer that, they will understand.

Sorry Peytonville didn’t work out for you. As someone who also was transferred here from the Midwest, it took a few years for it to feel like home. I would have jumped at the chance to go back home for the first year or two. And yes, we also experienced the shock of what we could buy with the proceeds of what we’d sold back home. I did eventually come to love it here, but I can sure understand why others wouldn’t - particularly with a job you thoroughly dislike and a house and neighborhood that you like even less.

Good luck to you in your new location - wherever that may be.

Sounds as if you are 24 hours from Tulsa.

Don’t hit me.

I’m old.

For me it sounds like a no-brainer also - go to Tulsa.

Tulsa has pretty affordable housing, doesn’t it? Seems like I remember Tulsa being considered a relatively low cost of living area in general. I’ve driven through there and eaten dinner there a time or three and saw nothing objectionable, particularly. A little bland, maybe, would be the worst criticism I could summon up.

For a good job where you will be happy, challenged, and manage to keep your seniority/benefits/vacation intact… it seems worth it.

That reminds me of something I learned awkwardly. Don’t enter contests you don’t want to win, BUT if you win, be a good sport about it.

Update:

I decided I would make this move - but my wife is dead set against it.

So, unless someone has some sort of unique argument that I can make to convince her otherwise, I guess this is not gonna happen.

Tulsa is a great city. Great restaurants, arts, etc. A good friend of mine is on the city council there.

This. If you have to live in Oklahoma, Tulsa is the place to do it. Good cost of living, lots of things to do, great food, great microbrewerys etc…

I have a good friend who lives there. He’s european, and loves the place. I was out to visit not long ago - the trip rocked (except for the massive hangover on the flight home).

Don’t turn it down without at least going for a visit.

Is there an MS support group in Tulsa? Would that help?

What reasons did she give? I have been to Tulsa a number of times and it is a perfectly fine city. It can be a little bland but I never noticed anything wrong with it at all. It has a friendly people, cheap cost of living, traffic isn’t bad, a decent airport, a great zoo and the same stores as every other mid-sized city in the U.S. The thunderstorms are really impressive if you like that sort of thing. If she is thinking Tulsa is like the beginning of the Grapes of Wrath, that is not true in the least.

The Wikipedia page on it is very positive and matches up with everything I have seen when I visited there. It isn’t some backwards, impoverished place. It is a decent sized city with several thriving industries.

I’d leverage some guilt into the argument. Unless she has provided you with sound reasons for not moving, it doesn’t seem any worse than where you currently are (and in many ways better). It would get you out of a job you dislike and away from a boss who is toxic. Why should her happiness mean more than yours? Why didn’t she mention her unwillingness to move back in March?

I’m curious why you didn’t look into the real estate market before moving to Peytonville. Make sure to look into it before moving this time.

I live in OKC and visit Tulsa regularly. Tulsa is not your typical Oklahoma landscape - Tulsa is actually pretty hilly (though nothing like Colorado obviously!) and has lots of trees. The city went to great lengths to landscape with trees, etc.

They have a great river trail system, and it’s always busy. Walkers, joggers, bicycle riders, roller bladers.

There is a wide selection of restaurants, several good museums, and I loved their aquarium.

Tulsa also has some really good doctors, and I have nothing but great things to say about their major hospital (St. Francis).

The biggest downside for most people however is the heat. Oklahoma is hot in the summer and surprisingly humid for a land-locked state. But we have generally very mild winters and a snow storm means we got 2-4 inches of snow…

Mostly I recall signs along the highways saying, “Don’t drive into smoke.” Whether grass fires or oil well fires or whole cities on fire, I dunno. But apparently the fires are frequent and widespread enough that they put up a shitlaod of warning signs about them.

I have friends in Tulsa who love it there. One is a Dane who loves the sunny warmth.