The Only Offer

I turned down the only job offer I've had this year. I'd like to explain that in a way that doesn't sound brave, because it wasn't brave. It was mostly bad timing.

The job was writing advertising copy for Halvern Packaging, out by the airport. Fifty-eight thousand a year, health insurance, a desk with a window. Idris put my name in front of his manager, which is not a small thing to ask a friend to do, and I said yes to the interview before I'd read a single thing about the company.

I read about them the night before. Between 2019 and 2023, Halvern was fined three times for putting waste into the river east of the plant. The last fine was two million dollars. The company called it an administrative problem. In the same year, they spent more money on advertising their recycling program than they paid in fines.

At the interview, they asked me to write two lines about the greenest packaging in Ohio. I wrote them in about ninety seconds, and they were good. That was the actual problem. I could do it, I would have kept doing it, and in a year I would have been the person who did it well.

Idris made the obvious argument, because it is the obvious argument: take the money and change the place from the inside. But I'd have been the newest writer in the smallest department. I wasn't going to influence anything except the coffee order.

It isn't that I'm unable to write things I don't believe. I did that for four years for a car dealership on Monroe Street, and I'd do it again tomorrow for a bank or a phone company. The river is two miles from the house where my sister's kids swim every July. That's the whole reason, and it's a smaller reason than it sounds.

The risk was real. My savings run out in March, and Idris's manager is the only manager who has answered an email since spring.

Idris asked me if I was sure. I told him I wasn't, which was true, and I sent the email rejecting the offer anyway.

He's still speaking to me. That was the part I was actually worried about.