JOB A ------ Corporate Travel X plus 1K per year Medical/Dental Bonuses 10 miles away 8-5 M-F No walk-ins Can't do friends' travel Office park location

JOB B ------ Leisure Travel X per year Medical Bonuses 2 miles away 8-5 M-F Walk-ins Can do friends' travel Mall location

What a dilemma. Neither of them had anything wrong with them! I've only once before had a good job offer; everything else has been utter crap. Underpaid utter crap. Choosing the lesser of two evils is easy. Deciding which good job I prefer more was surprisingly difficult.

Earlier in the day, I had logged onto ElderMOO to ask FarSide's opinion about the jobs because his mother is in the business, and I trust his judgment. There were a few other people around so I explained it to them also. The others recommended taking Job A because it sounded more sensible, paid a bit more, and was cut-and-dried work. I nodded my head. I could feel myself begin to talk myself into "being sensible." I could actually identify the process of justifying taking Job A. Then FarSide asked if I thought the additional money would make up for the tedium of corporate travel. What a smart man. The answer was no. So when the time came, I took Job B.

"But wait," Teresa Nielsen Hayden said when I told her of my decision. "I thought you hated everybody."

Here's the thing, though. If I took Job A, I'd never see anyone. That would be dreadful. I like walk-ins. I want people to come in so I can hate them. Well, I don't hate them at the moment I'm talking to them, usually, but afterwards, yes. And I get excited about booking international trips and vacations. I want to send people on trips because they want to go, not because they have to go to some meeting their boss is making them attend. If I couldn't laugh at the weird things clients want me to do for them, I wouldn't enjoy my job nearly as much. So I'm really sure going into leisure instead of corporate travel is the right decision for me. Best of all, Horizon Travel has a web site. Bwahaha! Soon I'll take it over and create a hot travel site and get all the best Nashville clients and earn a million! Or not! But I'll have fun.

And that, at the end of the day, is what is important to me.