First Date #5

When this woman walked in I thought "this is the most beautiful woman I've dated." Well, recently of course. ;)

She was tall, athletic looking, nicely dressed. I could get used to this dating thing… She pronounced the menu items in French. When I complimented her she said in a way that was more self-castigating than self-deprecating that "she didn't really know how to pronounce these words". [red flag #1] Over dinner she told me that she'd worked at a temp agency for ten years in Atlanta. I knew many folks used temp jobs to gain fulltime employment with firms, but when queried she admitted that although she occasionally converted to fulltime she never liked the people with whom she ended up working so always went back to temping. [red flag #2] A year ago she earned a nursing degree but really didn’t like working with nurses in Atlanta [red flag #3 - doesn’t sound serious, but at this point the negatives are piling up], so she'd moved back up North where she found she didn't really like working with the staff in the local a medical center [red flag #4]. Now she was going to work in a nursing home which would be light duty but a huge pay cut. In fact she mentioned the huge pay cut multiple times [red flag #5]. She went on with several stories about other activities in her life not running very smoothly. [was it all bad karma??]

Wow, I learned way more about this woman from the general story themes than I learned from what she had actually said. As we walked to our cars I hadn't even thought to give her a hug - until she put forward her hand for a handshake. I already had my keys in hand and I'd been so anxious to get in my car that I had to step back toward her just to shake her hand goodbye! I didn't mention anything about possibly meeting again…

[A week later I would learn through the grapevine that this person had been fired from her job at the local medical center - she was making everyone else at work miserable!]