I’m stuck picking between two job options and I don’t know who to ask anymore
I’m sitting at my kitchen table right now, staring at a crumpled pros and cons list that my cat chewed the corner of last night. The vanilla yogurt I opened two days ago is still half-eaten next to my laptop, and I’m pretty sure there’s a faint spot of mold along the rim. I haven’t thrown it away because I haven’t stood up from this chair in 45 minutes, and I don’t really have the energy to move. That’s how stuck I am.
Eight months unemployed after the last marketing agency I worked for laid off half the staff when their biggest client bailed. I’ve sent out almost 200 applications, had 11 interviews, and I finally got two offers. Two! That should be a win, right? Everyone keeps saying it’s a good problem to have. But good problems still hurt when you can’t figure out what to do with them.
First is the full-time role at that small agency out by the mall, 45 minute drive if there’s no traffic, which there almost always is. It pays $15 more an hour than the other offer, has health insurance, a 401k match, even two weeks of PTO starting day one. The boss that interviewed me shook my hand really hard and kept talking about how “we’re a family here and we grind when we need to grind.” Then he dropped that the big annual launch is the weekend of my birthday, and I’d be expected to be there, no exceptions. I laughed it off in the interview, but when I got to my car I sat there for 10 minutes just thinking about that. I haven’t seen my best friend Lila in three months because she moved to Portland, she was supposed to come visit that weekend for my birthday. It’s stupid, but that comment has been buzzing around my head ever since.
The other one is contract, one year only, no promise of renewal, no benefits. It’s doing social media and weekly newsletters for the elementary school 10 minutes from my apartment. The principal who interviewed me brought me a warm chocolate chip cookie she’d baked that morning, because she heard me cough when I walked in and said “sugar fixes everything when you’re nervous.” The office ladies stopped by the conference room just to say hi, and when I made a joke about how I’ve fought enough bad school copiers in college to handle theirs, they all laughed. I’d get to go to the school book fairs and help hang art in the hallway if I wanted, and the job is only 35 hours a week, no after hours emails unless something is actually on fire. It pays $2 less an hour than I was making at my last job, and I’d have to buy my own health insurance through the marketplace, which is not cheap.
I’ve already asked everyone I know for advice, and that’s part of why I’m here now. My mom says take the agency job, hands down. “A job is just a job, you don’t have to love it,” she said on the phone last night. She raised me alone, worked as a cashier for 20 years, so I get it. Stability is the only thing that ever felt safe to her. But she also doesn’t know that I used to sit in my car in the parking lot of my last agency job for 20 minutes before I went in, eating gas station Sour Patch Kids, trying not to have a panic attack. I never told her that, because I didn’t want her to worry.
Lila says take the school job, obviously. “Who cares about the money if you hate waking up every single day?” she texted me this morning. She quit her boring office job two years ago to do freelance illustration, and she’s living her best life, eating avocados from her own tree and going hiking on Wednesdays. But she also doesn’t have $12,000 in student loans that are going to start accruing interest again next month, and she doesn’t have a car that’s one bad brake job away from dying on the highway. I can’t just wing it the way she can right now.
I asked my uncle at the last family barbecue, and he turned it into a whole thing about how I need to “level up my career trajectory” and then tried to sell me his $150 resume review service, even though I already have the offers. That was awkward. I just nodded and bought him another beer and didn’t bring it up again.
I thought about posting this on my Instagram story, but the last time I posted that I was stressed about being unemployed, like 10 people commented “everything happens for a reason” and whatever, and I just wanted to throw my phone in the toilet. I don’t need vague positivity. I don’t need someone to tell me it’s all going to work out. I just need to know what other people did when they were here.
I went to the grocery store earlier to get milk, and the cashier asked me how my day was going, and I almost started crying right there in the checkout line. I just mumbled “fine, thanks” and grabbed my bags and got out of there as fast as I could. I don’t know why that hit me so hard. It was just a question. But no one’s actually asked me how I’m doing with all this, not really. They just give me their advice and move on.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, actually. When you ask people for advice, they’re not really telling you about you. They’re telling you about themselves. My mom’s advice comes from her being 19 and pregnant and homeless for a month, so of course stability is the only thing that matters. Lila’s comes from her spending two years crying through Sunday nights because she hated her job, so of course she thinks misery isn’t worth any amount of money. Neither of them are wrong, exactly, but they’re not talking about my life, either.
I don’t know what I’m expecting here, honestly. I don’t need a list of steps or a big inspirational speech. I just want to hear from someone who’s been here, choosing between a job that pays the bills but will suck the energy out of you, and a job that feels nice but might leave you screwed next year. Did you take the stable one? Did you regret it? Did you make it work? Did you take the risky one? Did it fall apart? Did it work out better than you thought? I can handle the messy answers. I don’t need the polished ones.
My cat just woke up and is now biting the edge of my pros and cons list again. The mold on the yogurt is definitely visible now. I should probably get up and throw it away. But I’m just going to sit here a little longer, and wait to see if anyone has anything real to tell me. (Word count: 1187)
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