Where Has Justin Been?

Where?

Through a veritable hell.

For me 2016 was the most up and the most down year of my life. Two years ago this month I was let go from my first managerial position before my 90 day probation was up. The hit to my pride, and the brutal break in my stride led to a series of poor decisions that left me and my family without our own home to live in.

After of month of failed job searches we decided to contact our boys from the DK again, and see if they had a motel I could run. After a mere five days I was good to go on one of their newest acquisitions in Pocatello. Without saving anyone's feeling the place was a dump, and the house, although spacious and well built, had been so badly treated and so disturbingly polluted by the previous manager that my wife lasted two days before she told me to pack it up, and go a different direction.

The problem was that we had moved out of our home to come to this motel. You can imagine the moment of realization that my own personal nightmare had become reality. I would be camping out on someone's floor with three kids and a baby, and the recovery would be long and arduous. I was vastly overwhelmed, and trying to hold an optimistic outlook.

Definitely not easy.

After another couple of weeks of failed interviews and conflict within myself my wife Rachel and I decided that Idaho just was not going to deliver our much needed living. We decided to start hunting in Utah. After only a few applications and about five interviews, three with the same company, I was offered a position with Bluehost in Orem.

My homelessness was six weeks old, and on its way out. Rachel, who is phenomenal with finances and making every dollar count managed to take two paychecks and the little bit of savings we had left and begin shopping a home. What usually turns out to be an easy thing ended up presenting a challenge.

Housing in the Salt Lake and Utah Valleys is in extremely high demand, and due to months of no worthy income well ... the credit score got slaughtered. That's right, a few weeks.

We were the most fortunate couple in the city that week when we found Lee, who owned one of the condos in our area. Hr not only rented it out to us within a day, but rented it to us for $300 less than those around us have been paying.

We had a home again after four months without.

I continued to work for Bluehost, and advanced in skill and technical knowledge. I even built my own blogs with my free hosting account and had a blast writing and designing it using WordPress. I advanced from Sales over First Tier Tech to Web Adviser and was there until a fateful day in January 2017.

On that day the entire building was emptied and taken to a townhall meeting in a different building where we were simply told, "Thank all of you for your hard work in making this company succeed. We are moving operations to Tempe. The layoffs will begin in March."

In an instant my future was once again jobless.

I immediately jumped in to the job search. Well ... I waited a day so I could process the fact that I had no security with Bluehost. I think the worst thing about the layoff was that they completely terminated our jobs. Those who wanted to continue to work for Bluehost in Tempe were invited to reapply. A minimal amount of those who did were hired. Actually, only one person I know of.

I began filling out applications between calls, but could see none of them through. I spoke with my Supervisor, and asked what she was going to do. She mentioned that Wayfair.com was hiring, they had a great starting wage, and they were at the next building South across the street.

I thought I would start there. On Sunday I let my church congregation know what had happened. After the first block I was approached by a couple of brethren who were happy to refer me to their firms. It did not work out.

Wayfair did.

I left Bluehost on the 23rd of March, and started Wayfair on the 27th. Going from tech support to customer support, particularly given Wayfair's ever-evolving model of service, was one of the toughest transitions I had made in a career. I was used to asking directly for the problem, working through it, and closing the call. That was how Bluehost did it.

Wayfair values assurance, empathy, small talk, and relationship building within every communication with their customers. These are skills I am exponentially better at, and still working on. I trained as a Sales and Service Consultant, or SSC. Within a couple of months I was an SSC level II. A few months later I was an SSC III. Each of these promotions of course comes with a pay raise. Finally I am making a transition in April to the Case Management Team. It has all the previous responsibilities except staying in queue on the phones every hour, and 50% more.

Over the years I have meditated on why it was Wayfair that provided my best, and blessed opportunity, and why I was not accepted with numerous other businesses and firms. Conclusively I determined that the Lord knew this was an environment where I could flourish, be nourished by a success oriented corporate culture, and experience promotions for the first time in my life.

Would I have known where I would end up with such a great company, and be able to experience not only promotions, even multiple promotions within a year of starting, but retain excellent status and am on a continual ride upwards - would I have known that, in retrospect, I would have chosen to go through my own personal hell. Would I have known that I would finally make decent money, and support my family. Yes I would have chosen to go through it.

Just because I like progressing. I do not like paying for it. But I understand why the payment can be heavy.