Grad School No More
Seattle, 9:20 PM: Oh man, this post is going to be full of epicness. In fact, it is going to have twice the epicness that I thought it would earlier in the day. Tonight our story begins with a person just wanting some dinner…
In the little hotel room book there was a sheet that contained locations that were close which would be of interest to many people. One of these was the Bellevue Square Mall. Searching for their website, I found numerous restaurants that it seemed like I could eat at. So, down I went to the concierge’s desk, got a map with stupidly simple directions (basically walk down a street, turn left, and walk down another street), and I set off on my journey to go find some normal people food.
First off, that map had a horribly deceptive scale. The walk to the place was uphill and really long, so by the time I got there, I was ready to eat. I walked into the mall and found a map of all the stores. Dining section, hmmm…what to eat? P.F. Chang’s would be ok, but ah! Red Robin!! Ok, where is it? “FC”. Food court, ok, where’s the food court on the map? After a couple minutes of searching, there was no food court or “FC” to be found. Looking back at the directory listing, I noticed the legend. “FC” was not food court after all (stupid me…) but was in fact Fountain Court. Cool, something to find now. Well…not quite. There was no Fountain Court anywhere on the map either. Starting to get a little angry, I looked back at the directory listing. Well, The Cheesecake Factory was also at “FC”, and I had actually seen that down the street on my way in, so I at least had some place to aim for.
Now we run into the second screwed up map of the night. Not only was this mall anything but a square, there was this random building attached to the parking garage off at the other end of the mall. Thinking that’s where The Cheesecake Factory was, it was where I set off for. As it turns out, it wasn’t really a separate building. It was really just a parking garage with various stores and restaurants making up two of its sides. Unable to find The Cheesecake Factory anywhere (my only guide to this mysterious “FC”), I went down to the bottom floor and started walking around.
After a couple minutes of knowing that I did not appear to be near where I wanted to be, I pulled out my trusty iPhone and put its map function to use. Find location, search “Red Robin”, and it’s…right in the middle of the not square mall. Grrrrr. Ok, so let’s call them and ask where they are. I call, get the little automated menu, and say that I want directions. “From the 405, exit at blah blah blah turn into the northeast parking garage blah blah blah top floor. Ah ha! The northeast parking garage was what I was just in!! I guess I just needed to go all the way up. On my way up, I saw this little kid running up the stairs too. Thinking that he just wanted his Red Robin, I smiled to myself and went all the way up.
Little kids apparently just like running up stairs. There was nothing but parking at the top, not even any stupid restaurants that I didn’t want around the outside edge. Figuring that I had misheard the “top floor” part but fairly sure the Red Robin was not in this parking garage anywhere, I walked across the top over to the mall. Getting slightly angry, I walked to the edge, looked down, and poof! Cheesecake Factory!! Could this be it? Was I getting close to the mysterious, unmarked “FC”?
Walking down a couple flights of stairs and crossing the skybridge into the Macy’s, I looked around for an exit to this Cheesecake Factory that apparently was part of the same overall structure as Macy’s. No Cheesecake factory on the 2nd floor, no Cheesecake Factory on the 1st floor. Not willing to let it pull a fast one on me again, I continued my hunt down into the next floor down of Macy’s. Down there was a small foyer and an exit to the street. Outside the exit was a very unimpressive fountain, quite unworthy of its own court. On one side of the fountain was The Cheesecake Factory. On the other, Red Robin. The search had come to an end at last.
Coming to Seattle was not solely so that I could spend way too much effort searching for a Red Robin. No, the reason I was here was so that I could talk to Microsoft, and by talk, I mean interview for a job. Not just an internship, but a full-time job. Compared to my dinner search saga, my Microsoft adventure sounds so boring in comparison. I got there in the morning, talked with a recruiter, went off and had 5 different interviews with various people, and then ultimately finished up the day with my recruiter again. The ultimate result? I accepted a job offer for a Program Manager position with the Windows Experience team. That, my loyal readers and stalkers, was the reason for my trip to Seattle.