Intern-national

Well, it's been a month since my last post (oh, wait just a couple days short - more on this later). Our baby is coming in two months, and I am in the middle of mid-terms in my final semester.

In the accounting profession this means going through the fall recruiting season. After interviewing with about 10 public accounting firms and one corporation my future is still a bit undecided. I am now on to the "second round" and have been interviewing with a few of that first dozen or so companies.

I was offered and have accepted an internship with Flying J, the corporation in question. I will be working part-time for the next two months in their subsidiary Big West Oil, LLC. Flying J considers itself the leader in the transportation hospitality industry, and their travel plazas are well known across the U.S. and Canada. This privately held company, with about 15,000 employees worldwide is headquartered about 7 miles from my home.

The internship was extended to me with the intent that if I took it I would be working toward a full-time employment offer. I accepted it because I wanted to see what it would be like to work at Flying J and to help me make a more informed decision when I have to choose where I work once school is over.

My parenthetical comment at the top of this post refers to an experience I had recently when volunteering at Deseret Industries (an LDS Goodwill-type store). I was helping out this past Monday (October 6) at a new store set to open on October 16 - the next Thursday. I was making small talk with my supervisor about how the store was going to open pretty soon. I mentioned that it was going to open "next week". He responded by saying that it was to open on the 16th, which by his count was 10 days. I made no further comment because I, probably wrongly, felt insulted.

What I felt like shouting was: "OF COURSE I CAN COUNT TO TEN!"

I didn't say "the store is opening in 7 days" I didn't even say "the store is opening in one week". I said that it was opening "next week". Perhaps I am more unused to communicating in English than I had supposed, but to me "next week" means ANY day from the upcoming Sunday through the subsequent Saturday, inclusive. Oct. 14 is "next week" even though it's only three days from now! Maybe I am wrong, but I felt like the guy was correcting me. If any of my readers feels that the expression "next week" is the same as saying "in one week", I'd appreciate knowing. If the misunderstanding was mine, I'd be able to move on pretty quickly.

And yes, I am probably a nerd for even letting this bother me. Oh well.

By the way, I start at Flying J on Monday. I needed to "vent my spleen" before going to work.