I need to vent for a moment. To wit:
I was sitting here minding my own business and looking for some information on the Website of one of the several professional organizations in my world, and I noticed that they were plugging their new social networking site, which is sort of like an industry-specific version of LinkedIn. So I went to investigate it, and browsing around, I noticed that they had a job forum. I’m not job-hunting, particularly, but I always like to keep my eyes open for new possibilities, so I looked at it. And lo and behold, there was a job that sounded perfect for me.
It’s a long story, but there are a bunch of subspecialties in my field, and my particular subspecialty is a little more obscure and less “hot” at the moment than the others, so jobs that are truly just right for me are kind of few and far between. This one, though, could have been invented for me: it requires someone with a content/writing/editorial background, and a library science degree is preferred.
And it’s at Zappos. Zappos, the online shoe store that is my favorite place to shop, from which I’ve bought countless pairs of shoes. The perfect job at the perfect place, in other words.
Before a) jumping up and down with excitement and b) zooming my résumé to them right away, I looked for a location in the job description. I had this vague recollection that Zappos was someplace in the Southeast—not my ideal, but not out of the question, either, depending on where in the Southeast we’re talking about. This could be good.
But no. My recollection was faulty. They’re in Las Vegas. I loathe Las Vegas.* Of all the places in the country that one might consider moving to, on a scale of 1 to 10, Las Vegas falls somewhere in the region of Miami. Or Camden, NJ. Or to put it in early Talking Heads terms, I wouldn’t move there if you paid me; I wouldn’t live there, no siree.
Not even to work for Zappos, alas. Why couldn’t they be somewhere else? It would be too much to ask for them to be someplace I actively want to move, of course, but couldn’t they at least be in Des Moines or Raleigh or someplace I could even remotely conceive of considering moving to? It’s no fair, I tells ya. No fair at all.
*I didn’t actually know that I hated Las Vegas until recently. I mean, I knew that the weather wouldn’t appeal to me, and neither would the city’s status as one of the fastest-growing in the country, especially because the growth seems to be mainly concentrated in new, faceless suburbs. But I didn’t have anything against Las Vegas, particularly. Kitsch doesn’t appeal to me (<–understatement) and I’m not much on gambling—no moral objections or anything, I just get bored as soon as I lose more than $5.00—but I was still fairly curious about the place, and believed that like any good American, I should see it at least once. Then I went to a convention there this past spring, and slightly to my surprise, I absolutely hated the place. Hated it. Everything about it. It’s depressing, it’s skeevy, it’s unpleasant. I hope never to go back.