Let's see...first there was Wards, when they moved from the old building in St. Paul (which was imploded in 1996, watch the YouTube video here) to the new location, which became Herberger's (I think) after Wards went out of business in around 1999ish, and I honestly lost track of what's been in that building after that. It was a Barnes and Noble bookstore for a while, now I think it's a HealthPartners clinic...anyway, I started working at the old store in 1990, when I was 16, and I think I left in late 1995? Maybe 1996? I know I didn't work there when we got married, which was in September of 1996, but I might have worked there earlier that year, although for some reason I don't think I did. I think 1995 was my last year there. And for those of you who didn't already know, my hubby worked there as well. He started in the old store in 1989 (yes, we're the same age, but he started when he was 15 and I didn't start until I was 16). And no, that's not how we met, exactly, but I'd say it is where we became friends. We met in school -- we went to school together from 7th grade through 12th grade -- but didn't really have any classes together or hang out with the same people at school, but we did see each other a lot at work. But that's not what I came here to write about. This time.
I don't remember when the new store opened, but I know I helped close the old store and open the new one. Although after I graduated from high school in 1993, I was working several jobs and wasn't as super-involved with moving to the new store as I would have been if it was my sole full-time job.
Then the humane society moved. Twice, actually! I started working there in late 1996. One of the jobs I'd been working before that was as a home health aide, but I'd tweaked my back (thanks in part to having already hurt it in a car accident my senior year of high school) and decided not to pursue a career in nursing (please join me in a hearty round of laughter) so I got a part-time job doing data entry at the humane society. The "office" I had there makes my current office space look huge, but I'll get to that later, too. ;) NO I'M NOT COMPLAINING! ahem. I worked there until the summer of 1997, when I moved to Illinois to join my hubby. You see, he still worked for Wards -- in fact, he had gone through a series of promotions and was something like a Director of . . . sorry, hubby, I don't remember what your fancy title was, but he had been offered a job at the then-new warehouse in a Chicago suburb, right about the time we found out we were expecting a baby that would end up being our first and only successful pregnancy and the apple of my eye whom most you now know as Stone :D. But that's not what I came here to write about, either; I just felt I had to explain why I left a job I loved dearly to move to freaking Illinois of all places. And then a year later, Peder finally quit Wards and we moved back to Minnesota anyway with a 6-month-old baby and basically started all over again.
Well, he started all over again. I got my old job at the humane society back (not the first amazing coincidence in my life, but definitely one that still gives me goosebumps!!) and so went back in the summer of 1998, but by that time the department I worked in had moved to a mobile office unit next to the main building. So not a full-fledged across-town move, but still a move. (Oh, and I also feel like it's worth mentioning that I wasn't just a part-time data entry person by this point, or really for the majority of my time there. I did start as a PT data entry person, but very shortly increased to FT and my title changed to Development Assistant. The humane society is now a huge organization here, having become a conglomerate of five local shelters, but back then it was one facility with a very small business office and fundraising department, so I basically entered all of the direct mail donations and helped with fundraising campaigns, and helped in other business office areas as needed. To this day, it makes my heart happy seeing and hearing about how much they've grown, thinking about how small they used to be!) Speaking of the merge, though -- shortly before I left the second and last time in 2000, the humane society I worked for had just merged with one of the other humane societies in the area, and our department was moved out of the mobile office unit (which we called The Palace because it was actually a double wide mobile trailer with no working restroom) and to a suburb about 10 minutes away. The reason I left had nothing to do with the move; it was because we had since decided that it wasn't worth me working FT just to pay for daycare and our health insurance (even though my mom was providing daycare services for me, so I was getting a great deal -- but still, even working FT, my check covered insurance and family-discounted daycare and maybe half a tank of gas for my 1989 Suburban) so we were going to sell our house, turn my mother-in-law's house into a duplex, and move in with her so I could quit my job and be a FT stay-at-home mom while my hubby went to plumbing school for 5 years.
I had to go to the new office for about 3 days.
And then, there was the Baldwin hospital move. I started working at the Baldwin hospital in September 2009 as a CNA (certified nursing assistant) about to start my core nursing classes for nursing school. I left there officially in July 2016 as a PRN registered nurse, which is also the same month that the Baldwin Area Medical Center officially moved from their original location on 10th St/Hwy 63 in Baldwin and into the brand new hospital closer to I-94 on the newly-created Berg-something street, behind the A&W, and changed their name to Western WI Health. That's when I officially left; however, I worked my last shift at BAMC on December 31, 2015, and a few days later started my new job that I guess I can stop calling my new job because I've been there over 5.5 years and counting now... 😌
And it certainly has been a cluster these last few weeks. Especially Friday. Especially if you're like me, and like working in a clean, organized environment with as few extraneous random people invading your space as possible. Which isn't possible when you and everyone else in the office is packing everything up and movers are coming in to take everything away and move it to the new office. By the time I left on Friday afternoon, my office was no longer my safe haven; it was horrible. There were yellow packing boxes everywhere, and bookshelves, and moving men wrapping said bookshelves and pushing stacks of yellow boxes, and so many people doing so many things and I was just in sensory overload...yuck. I left without even taking pics of my old office for nostalgia's sake.
So this is the first time I've actually been part of the move itself. Over the past few weeks, I've been packing up my personal things -- not just because the official emails said that the moving company was only liable for moving company property, but also because I knew I was downsizing from being the sole occupant of a nice-sized office, to sharing office space and having a new space of my own that was approximately the space of a small cubicle.
I still over-estimated the size of my new space.
So, Friday was our last day at the St. Paul office. As I said above, I've been bringing my personal stuff (which consisted of some knick-knacks and seasonal decorations, but also some healthcare related stuff like books, OK a lot of books...) home for a few weeks. The problem being that I'm also trying to declutter my home since we're planning on moving soon, too, and honestly the reason those books ended up at work in the first place is because I didn't want them at home anymore. Long story short, I've got small bags full of books everywhere now -- some in the living room, some in the Nox, some in the truck. And room for none of them at work. And I have a strict policy against using my vehicles as storage, so they need to come out of there and, I guess, into the house. UGH! In case you were wondering, the reason they're in small bags is because books are heavy and small bags of them are easier to transport than big bags of them. So, there.
Saturday morning I made my first trip inside the new clinic. I'd driven past it a few times before, but Saturday I was armed with my all-access badge and went in with the intentions of unpacking and setting up my office area so I don't have to do it on Monday morning. And before you call me an overachiever, I'm not -- I have clinic Monday morning, so I literally won't have time to unpack on Monday when everyone else is unpacking. I am already nervous about Monday morning clinic because we'll be in a new place, I am NOT going to add to my stress by not knowing where any of my supplies are!
My first impressions? Wow. It definitely feels like a new workplace. It's all bright and clean and new and strange,. Familiar things are in different places. Based on the blueprints we were shown on the layouts of our offices, I chose my desk spot because it was in the corner, away from the door, and didn't have another desk next to it; so imagine my surprise when I got there and found my office set up completely backward from the blueprint I had seen. That is, the number for the desk I had carefully and thoughtfully selected was assigned to the desk closest to the door with another desk next to it. I took a deep breath, and then another one, and then said "oh, well!" and commenced unpacking. What difference does it really make?! The computers were already hooked up and everything. I'm an introvert who isn't used to sharing an office. I'm also flexible and adaptable in the workplace. ;)
So, with that move basically done on my part -- just have to figure out what to do with the crap that either won't fit in the new space, or doesn't have an obvious new space to fit in yet (mostly decorations and comfort items), and get used to where supplies are now kept, and figure out the exam room situation and everything else that makes it feel like I've started a new job -- maybe the Home Moving gods will smile upon us sometime soon! UGH.
I mean, the good news is that we haven't had any showings cancelled recently due to the sellers accepting another offer while we were waiting for our showing appointment. Hopefully that curse is broken. The last few showings have actually happened on the first day that the properties in question went active on the MLS (not sure if that's correct terminology, I'm basing this on what I've picked up from our realtor and what I've seen used in online listings). Our curse now, and believe me that curse is the key word here (but as a verb rather than a noun) is that the game has changed. Or we expected it to be very different. It's "only" been 17 years since we bought a house, but we both thought the game would be pretty much the same. I don't know if this is a recent change, or what, but it's taken some adjusting, and I think we finally get the new rules.
Apparently now, instead of the seller setting the asking price at more than what they want and leaving room to bargain with the hopeful buyers in their favor (so the buyers feel like they're getting a deal, lol), the thing now is to set the asking price for less than what they want and get a bidding war going. Which is a problem, because we're not into bidding wars. It actually kind of pisses me off, because I feel like - if you want xyz for what you're selling, list it for xyz or even xyz+100 and be willing to come down a bit. Don't list it for xyz and then ignore the first offer you get for xyz because you're going to hold out and see if anyone offers you more.
Because that's what happened this week. We found a place we liked -- it almost met the Trifecta of Happiness, it didn't quite have the outbuildings we needed but we liked it so much we decided we could make it work, so the same night that we looked at it, we texted our realtor and asked him to put in an offer for the full asking price. We debated over whether to put our offer in right away or not, knowing that there were lots of other showings going on as well, and ultimately felt that being the first offer in would be to our advantage.
We were wrong! And that makes me mad. So mad that I wouldn't even want that place anymore. We made a good, honest offer of the asking price, and didn't get any personal response. Not even a decline of our offer. We were just ignored, and the seller(s) announced that they were expecting multiple offers and wanted all interested parties to submit their best offers by Saturday at some specific time for consideration. Like I said -- I was (still am) just angry, disheartened, and mad about being flat-out ignored and disrespected for offering WHAT THEY WERE ASKING that we didn't even ask our realtor to re-submit our offer (which was only valid, I think, until Friday night). Seriously! That WAS my best offer and it was exactly what you asked for, and if that's not what you wanted in the first place then forget it. I'm out. And it's not just the principle, either, it's the money. No matter what the comps and the appraisals say, any material item is still only worth what someone will pay for it -- and for us, that place was not worth paying more than asking price. If it's worth more than that to someone else, more power to them. God has something better planned for us.
At least we're getting closer. One of these times, we're bound to find the window He's opened for us!
On that note, I'm signing off. I have to get to bed early tonight. I timed my new drive to work on Saturday (well, one possible route -- there are now many, many possible options) and it will take me about 10 minutes longer than usual. However, the walk from my parking spot to the building is significantly less now (from 3 blocks to, um, across a parking lot) so it will probably even out. My point being, I don't have spare time in the morning anymore.
TTYL!
No comments:
Post a Comment