Job Hunting

 

"I see you in a yellow building with green shutters," the fortune teller said. For fun, a girl friend and I had gone to her for a reading. She lived near the New England coast in a cozy ground-floor flat. I lived in Boston.

I was desperately trying to find work in France, Austria, Germany, Belgium or Holland. I had sent around 800 CVs at that point based on want ads, names from business directories and professional associations.

Then I saw an ad in the IHT that a company in Switzerland was looking for someone who knew Digital Equipment Corp., spoke French and German. The last line was, "We'll get working papers." To that point I hadn't considered Switzerland because I'd been told working papers were next to impossible.

I'd established a credit union for DEC employees based at their headquarters in Maynard, MA and spent eight years developing the organization. My German was rusty. My French too minimal to gather rust.

I faxed a CV.

Within an hour the owner of the company was on the phone. The following Sunday I was on a plane to Geneva.

The deal was simple. If I were hired or he rejected me, he'd pay expenses. If I was hired and rejected the post, I'd pay my airfare.

After picking up a rental car, I drove to the owner's home to pick up the keys to the company flat where I would be staying. He and his family were having a BBQ and fed me.

The company flat was in a Swiss village of about 600 people and 6000 cows. The view of the Jura was breathtaking, but I was too tired to poke around. I set the alarm of 7:00 and fell asleep.

Still jet lagged I woke with the alarm, dressed and drove up the mountain to the office building to another village where the office was located. I was a bit confused by the yellow signs along the road. They would give the time to the next town, but it took only a fraction of the time to arrive. Later I discovered the time was based on walking, not driving.

I found the correct address. The building was yellow with green shutters.

Something was wrong. It was getting dark. I then realized that it was 7 p.m. not 7 a.m. when the alarm went off. With the long summer days, it was easy to think it was morning when it was evening. I went back to the company flat and to sleep.

The next morning, I repeated the trek from one village to the other to go through what would be a day-long interview. Not only did I observe the other employees doing what I would do, I was sent off to have a coffee with a former employee who was to tell me how the owner was terribly difficult to work for. She spoke truthfully. The owner of the firm did not believe in leaving loose ends.

By September, I was at the job for what would be a three-year stint fulfilling my contract. It was not a happy time. My strengths were not what was needed and I had to really work hard on my lesser skills to meet the firm's needs. There was comfort in the knowledge of the ethics shown by all parties. When I finally gave my notice, I suspect the owner was relieved. However, the firm generously maintained by working permit until my new employer was able to get another permit for me.

I left the yellow building with the green shutters with relief and pride. Relief I was no longer fulfilling responsibilities that were difficult to accomplish. Pride that I had grown professionally outside my comfort level. Pleasure at the relationships I'd had with clients and colleagues some which continue to today. In fact, I just had lunch with a former co-worker.

A 30-year reunion of the founding of the firm brought me back to the yellow building with the green shutters. The owner of the firm, now retired, had arranged with the new occupants to let us tour the premises. They had been redecorated, but were not so different that they didn't feel the same. It was almost as if we had just popped out for lunch.

I looked out the same window, I had looked out for three years at the same flower-bedecked fountain. In my imagination I could see Nicky, Wendy and Jim's desks in the room. In the other offices were Christianne, Maggie, Gerald, Virginie, John and Jane. I felt that I should pick up the phone to telephone clients and potential clients and stop wasting time. Or maybe I should go to the kitchen to brew/steep/draw a pot of tea, depending on which what country the staff member came from forming their English.

Almost three decades later, I can look back on those three years with gratitude that it was a step in my life that brought me my Swiss nationality, confirmed how I wanted and didn't want to spend my professional life without creating damage along the way. 

I don't believe in the occult or fortune tellers, but yellow buildings and green shutters?