Decisions, Decisions

This afternoon at about 4:40, my desk phone rang. It was the woman I interviewed with last Friday. She was calling to offer me the job. So we talked for a few minutes, and I told her that, while I was pretty sure I'd accept, I'd like to think about it over the weekend. I am still not completely certain it's the right thing to do. Well, who better to ask for advice than the interwebz?

So here are some good reasons and bad reasons, to stay and to go.

Good reasons to go:
I'm being offered a 6% pay increase. Shazayam!

The work appears, on the face of it, to be a better match for my background and overall career goals, inasmuch as I have any.

My current work group is permanently bogged down in one pointless, fruitless project after another, and as far as I can tell, this is largely just because the panicmonger's boss dislikes her so much.

No more panicmonger, no more hourly and daily and weekly and monthly status reports, no more documenting the documentation, no more Scotland Yard... at least, not as far as I know. I have to admit I didn't ask that in the interview. ("Would I be expected to show up on time at this job?")

I'd get to travel a lot more!

Jobs don't seem to open up very often in the new division, which would kind of tend to indicate that people aren't leaving. And I do take it as a positive sign that they move so quickly.

Bad reasons to go:
Practically everybody else has, and I really want a happy hour.

I beat the newbies! Ha ha! In your face, newbies!

Robbie wants me to make the PM cry.

The building has better lighting. And it's closer to home!

The prospective new boss seemed really, really happy and excited when she called to make the offer. (I don't know if that's really a bad reason, but I'm putting it under the emotional reasons vs. rational reasons column, anyway.)

I wouldn't have to share a ladies' room with those stuck-up girls from Bridge anymore.

Good reasons to stay:
In the new job, I would be the third person in line to answer phones to the general public in case of an emergency such as Hurricane Rita. That sounds so not fun.

The job overall is entirely administrative - "soft" work, whereas what I'm doing now is partly technical - "hard" work. I'm probably better suited to "soft" but the "hard" work makes me feel smarter. And overall this would put me back on the "softer" career path.

I enjoy a significant portion of my current work, and those particular job duties excuse me from the bulk of the hopeless, endless, pointless projects mentioned above.

I'm on the short track to promotion and am generally treated extremely well, including being exempt from a lot of the tracking and checking up that many of my coworkers - and for that matter the PM - are subject to.

I like the people I work with, particularly Robert, with whom I work very closely, who recruited me to the agency two years ago, thus rescuing me from Corpus and from underpaid marketing hell, and who will be seriously left in the lurch by my leaving.

Bad reasons to stay:
The great unknown. What if I don't like it? Is there an "undo" button?

Guilt. Agh! The walloping, horrible, awful guilt.

Though it's closer to home, the building is further from the break spot as well as Dominican Joe. And will I still be able to take three-martini breaks? This is another important question I didn't ask during the interview.

I'd still be with the agency, so I couldn't spend 43 seconds on LeatherDreams.com on my last day.

What if the new division doesn't have people who snore all day or walk around with antennas sticking out of their heads?!? I'll be seriously short on blog fodder.

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And on a superstitious note: If you want to be sure you're offered a position, call in sick with the runs when you go to your interview. So far, this tactic has a 100% success rate.