You Thought It Was Over…But It’s Not

Thursday morning I woke up expecting to have no agenda in particular. Just a relaxing day recovering from so much talking about myself… Not too long after I woke up, however, I received a call from John, my recruiter, promising both good news and bad news. The bad news was that two of the companies had come back to him declining to offer me a position – Oppermann and RKD (I’ve already explained why) – which was a bummer because there was a three way tie for first (in relation to my interest in the companies I had interviewed with) and Oppermann was one of those three.

The good news was that Traynor O’Toole had come back with an offer, feeling that I would be a very good fit in their firm. Also, Frank Ennis & Associates (the company that had been forced to cancel their interview a few days before) had come back and set up a new interview for that evening at 5pm. This was all good news, but then my brain kicked on and forced me to stress over it (I do this too much…). Traynor O’Toole was somewhere around seventh or eighth out of nine on my mental list of preferences and they wanted an answer by the following Monday. This established the potential for me to be in a position of accepting an offer from a company that I wasn’t as excited about just to guarantee that we could be here (sort of taking a hit for the team). There was still a good two whole days to get feedback from the many other companies that I had seen, most of which I was more excited about working for, but my brain latched on to this one negative possibility and I got to think about that all day long…

I met with John about 3pm to get info on this last company I was to meet. It turns out that they were located south of Dublin, along the coast a bit, in a town called Blackrock. Fortunately (since I have no car here) there is another commuter train system called the DART that runs along the coastline and scoops into city center. The DART is more like a real train than the LUAS (or MAX). It rides on more standard feeling tracks, goes faster for longer distances (since it isn’t shooting through as much urban area), and has that rolling rhythm that trains are supposed to have. It also felt older, like it had been around a while, but was a good ride and seemed like a good commuter system (why all these trains aren’t in some way connected, I don’t know, but they are planning on doing that…eventually…). I would compare it to the commuter train I rode on in Chicago that shot way out into the suburbs (not the urban "L" train).

On the DART, Blackrock was only a twenty-minute ride away and I studied the documentation that John had given me on the way out (this was the company that had no website). This particular firm was fairly small (25 people) and focused largely on the leisure industry – hotels, spas, pubs, restaurants, etc. The kind of work they were doing seemed interesting, but I was a bit skeptical because this industry seems to rub off on the architecture firms that work within it on a regular basis, and not in a good way. I met with one of the partners who was a very down to earth guy, which came as a happy surprise, but he also said he was the partner trying to expand the business beyond just leisure. I never met Frank Ennis, but I expect he was the super star that dealt with all of the leisure architecture (it’s hard to explain, but it seems like when people work a lot for clients that have big money, want to make more, get high on power, and want to do “creative” things, but don’t really know how to be creative, that it rubs off on them in a grease floating on water sort of way…).

In any case, as the interview went along this firm didn’t seem like they were offering anything that would rank them above the offer I already had. They were doing a lot of residential development and seemed more like a production architecture sort of place. All glitz and no soul, if you know what I mean. Oh, I forgot to mention, that the firm itself was set in a building that used to be a pub, which they had remodeled as their office. The space itself didn’t give me a good feeling either, like they didn’t really care enough to make it presentable.

So, I left the interview with limited interest and still faced with Traynor O’Toole as my only offer. Don’t get me wrong, TOT would be a great firm to work for and I would get a lot of really good experience there, but in making this big change, part of the deal was finding a place where I might actually get excited about architecture again, and this didn’t strike me as that place. As I sat stewing in my own blend of unjustified mental anguish I decided to call John and let him know how the interview had gone (he was very good at checking in with me after every interview and seeing how things went). I let him know that Frank Ennis didn’t strike me as an upgrade from the offer I already had on the table and laid out for him what firms I would really be excited about, and what other firms I would also consider over Traynor O’Toole.

He then said something that changed my mood completely. “You will be happy to know, then, that one of those firms you just mentioned as your top firms have come back to me and offered you a position.” The firm was Henry J. Lyons, one of the firms tied for first in my brain.

I thanked him profusely for this information and spent the rest of my ride home with a big s***-eating grin (there's really no other way to describe it...) on my face. Now I could move on to worrying about something else…

Instead of going home I headed for the shopping center to call and let Mariah know the good news. My mom also got a call and, of course, I posted here for everyone else. I then decided to treat myself to a good meal. I had yet to really go into a restaurant to eat anything, primarily because eating in a restaurant by yourself is just about the loneliest thing I can think of (I really feel sorry for people who have to travel and do this on a regular basis). As it turned out, there was a Friday’s linked to the mall (yes…I said Friday’s), and some US style ribs really sounded good right then. I headed over and got a table…alone…and ordered what they had on offer for ribs, which was a full rack and came with chips (fries) and onion rings (yes…I said fries AND onion rings…). I guess the onion rings are supposed to count for a vegetable. I would have ordered a small salad, but the ribs themselves were already LUDICROUSLY EXPENSIVE! So, I skipped the health and went strait for the heart attack. Nothing about food had yet struck me as completely out of proportion in relation to expense, even though I recognized things were a bit more expensive here and there, but this seemed absurd. €22 for…RIBS…and as it turned out, not very good ribs. They were very, very dry and the sauce was all tang. The onion rings and chips were good though…

Before I left I was faced with the dilemma of not remembering if tipping was custom in Ireland. I had the thought that it wasn’t, like most European countries, but I wasn’t sure. After looking around a bit to see if I could tell if other patrons were leaving tips and having no success, I decided, given the fact that the food was hardly tip worthy and it was unlikely I would ever patronize this restaurant again, I paid for my meal and headed home. (I have since found out that it is starting to be done more often here, but not as an expected percentage, but more if you have some change left out of your payment you leave that.

It wasn’t the kind of orally blissful celebration I was hoping for, but it worked out well enough and I headed off to bed.