Dog With Two Bones

Welcome back! When we last left our hero, he was in the discomfiting position of having said yes to two overlapping employment options. What happens next gets even wilder. But first let us describe the contestants (using fictional names of course):

First: PhoneMonkey Communications, an old favorite, the company I belonged to for 14 years ending in October of 2008. They're a nimble, friendly little telecommunications software outfit with the knack of shifting habitat and popping up in unexpected States; originally encountered in Tucson during my years there in the '90s, they've since spread and can now be found in Massachusetts, California, Florida, and (coming full circle) Phoenix. When I moved to Seattle in 2000, PhoneMonkey experimented with letting me continue full-time as a telecommuter; the arrangement lasted nine years. (Probably they wanted to claim Washington as another habitat.) Yes, they laid me off in '08, but I can't complain, since in '99 they let me take unpaid leave to finish my novel.

Alas, the novel didn't sell. Not PhoneMonkey's fault.

Second: a local manufacturing company here in Seattle which I'll call Ballard Pterodactyl. They occupy a rambling series of factory floor spaces and dusty fluorescent office niches, upstairs and downstairs along half a block of an old blue-collar street of which they seem the original occupants. Defying the neighborhood gentrification, they persist in their wooden building that dates from the '40s, and inside one can find preserved a vanished Seattle: dim hallways that remind me of the back passages at Pike Place Market, narrow stairways like the ones aboard Puget Sound ferries. Nevertheless, they do a global business with clients in Europe and assemblers in China.

We return to our story. On my cellphone, in the car, I'd said yes to my ex-manager at PhoneMonkey to return for a four-week contract, telecommuting as before, starting on Monday. The car was pulled over to the curb mere yards from the Ballard Pterodactyl building, where I had an interview at 3:00 (and finalizing the PhoneMonkey details with my ex-manager ran the clock to 2:59). I dashed across the street in my jacket and nice shoes, and interviewed from a position of such undesperation that I demanded $5/hr more than I'd be getting from PhoneMonkey--and they agreed to it. The contract would also be for much longer, maybe most of a year. I tend to suck at interviews, but to my vast surprise they seemed all but ready to hand me the job on my way out the door. We agreed on a start date of April 1, and they promised to contact me with their decision soon.

This much you already know.

Now here's the twist: I didn't tell Ballard Pterodactyl that I'd just accepted a contract with PhoneMonkey. (Why spoil a perfectly good interview? They still might not even offer me the job.) HOWEVER, at the interview I dutifully handed over my page of references--on which was listed PhoneMonkey! Indeed, I'd just handed Ballard Pterodactyl the number of the very same ex-manager with whom I'd just finalized the contract.

This literally didn't occur to me all day. I came home in a tizzy of double success, thinking that even IF Ballard Pterodactyl offered me the job it didn't start till April 1, so I MIGHT be able to squeeze both contracts in...and I worried about the East Coast trip...and I had dinner and went to bed...and then in the middle of the night I came bolt awake. Ballard Pterodactyl is going to call my PhoneMonkey manager, I thought, and they're going to LEARN that I've already been hired, and I won't get the offer. What's more, my manager's going to LEARN that I committed to an April 1 contract elsewhere, and I might LOSE the contract I already have.

I've recently been reminded of the parable of the dog with two bones (thanks to the TV show Farscape, which Sara and I have been revisiting on DVD). A dog with a bone looks in the water and sees another dog with another bone. Wanting both bones, he opens his mouth to seize the second one, and plop, the first one falls in and disappears, leaving him, in the words of Ben Browder, looking at himself, with nothing. (5:45 here)

Oops.

So I got up at 4:30 in the morning and sent an email to my guy at Ballard Pterodactyl, saying "You should I know I've been offered a job elsewhere (at PhoneMonkey, in fact, one of my references, ha ha, how ironic!). Of course I'd prefer to work for YOU, but you'll have to let me know soon so I can turn the other company down."

That morning, still in a cold sweat, I tried to reach my ex-manager at PhoneMonkey. I called her home office (she usually telecommutes) and reached her husband, who said, "Oh YOU'RE Matt! Um...you should get in touch with her right away...there's...well, I shouldn't be the one to...you just should contact her real soon."

My cold sweat now positively arctic, I tried every number I had for her, to no avail. Sent her an email--sat there miserably waiting for her call--hours went by--and of course she called just as there was a knock on the front door from some salesman. Thankfully Sara was there to handle that; alive to the situation and her own financial peril, she chased him off with the polite equivalent of a howitzer.

And--my manager wasn't mad! She wasn't canceling the contract, she hadn't talked to Ballard Pterodactyl yet, she still wanted my services. Apparently her clueless husband got me mixed up with some other PhoneMonkey employee. What's more, she had a VOICEMAIL from Ballard Pterodactyl, in which THEY admitted to HER that they were offering me the contract.

So that's how I officially learned that I had two jobs. With reluctance I told my ex-manager (whom I like a lot) that I would have to take the more financially-beneficial offer, and we agreed that my PhoneMonkey contract would be reduced from four weeks to two. She was disappointed too, as they really need another tech writer for the four weeks--and suddenly we both realized we were in a unique situation. She could HAVE my full contract...by giving me a bad reference when she called Ballard Pterodactyl back!

Ulp. There was a long moment of silence on the phone. Then we both laughed. "As if I would do that," she said. "I owe you a steak dinner!" I cried.

Good, friendly PhoneMonkey!

A short while after hanging up with her, Ballard Pterodactyl called and made me the official offer. And so, ladies and gentlemen, SOMEHOW, after just one week of unemployment, I have two contracts lined up, the first one starting Monday, WITH a week off between them where the East Coast trip can theoretically fall. I am--the dog with two bones.