Well, as some of you might already know, Kent resigned from Marriott last Friday after almost 20 years with the company, and has accepted a position with Marcus Hotels & Resorts as Corporate Director of Revenue Strategy. What he'll be doing for the company, I have no idea. What I do know right now is that it will require us to move to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, once our house here sells.
Now, if you happen to be someone who has not heard our news then, "Surprise! Kent quit Marriott and we're moving to Milwaukee!"
Many of you might think this is this was a rash and rather sudden move on our part, but this has actually been in the works for quite a while. Here's how the whole thing played out:
Back in October, one of Kent's co-workers, and good friend announced that he was resigning from Marriott and going to work for Marcus. This co-worker also happens to live in our neighborhood and his boys play baseball at the same field as ours do so we see them quite often. Towards the end of fall baseball last year Kent was talking to this friend about his new job and the friend commented about how they didn't have anyone at the corporate offices to head up revenue management for the company and that getting this position instituted was one of his first items of business. The friend, whose son had a game before ours, left to go home and I leaned over to Kent and quickly stated, "That's not something he's going to call you for, right? Because I just want you to know we are not moving to Milwaukee!"
Fast forward to January. Kent receives email from friend asking for help coming up with a job description for this new position they are creating so they can start entertaining candidates. Kent replies with needed information, friend replies back to say thanks and asks if Kent would be interested in the position, he could pay such and such an amount. Kent kindly forwards the email to me, I comment on how great the salary is, but unfortunately we would not be interested since it involves the whole moving to Milwaukee thing. At this point I need to add that I am now pregnant with Catherine. Some of you might remember our move to Atlanta 2 weeks after James was born. This same friend was the one who called Kent when I was 6 months pregnant with James and got us Kent to accept the job here. Not that I'm complaining about the offers, but his timing could use a little improvement!
Not too long after this email exchange, Kent and I sat on our living room couch watching the play off game between the Packers and the Giants. The weather was ridiculously cold, way below freezing, and Jimmy Johnson poured water into a glass to see if it would freeze by the end of the game. We spent most of the game laughing at the fact that our friend now lived up there, and how there was no way we could ever live there.
A few more months passed by, and due to the fact that his house is still up for sale and his kids are going to finish out the school year here we still see our friends on a regular basis. Not much is said about the job at first, but eventually it does get brought up again due to the fact that none of the resumes they are getting can really compare to Kent's, so our friend kindly asks for Kent's resume so he can talk to the president of the company about possibly making it a remote position. Now we know this is a long shot, but Kent obliges, because you just never know right!? Turns out after much discussion, this was not a job that would work well as a remote position. Our friend extended an offer to Kent to fly him out, just so he could get an idea of the job and of the area if he was interested. Kent again declined the offer.
In the mean time several things happen at Marriott that force us to start talking about his future with the company. Nothing bad, just things that make us start thinking. The main thing being that there was a position that opened up that was Kent's for the taking, but he said the thought of doing the job made him sick to his stomach, he was already working way more than he should and if he took this job any small bit of free time he had would be over. This concerned me and we started talking about what he would do next with Marriott, and did he think the working conditions would be any better. We started talking about how Michael was going to be 13, and he had about 6 more years left at home, did he feel like he was ever going to get more time to spend with him or any of the boys or Catherine in the near future? We talked about how when we emailed our friend in Milwaukee at his work email on the weekend we never heard from him until Monday, so he probably wasn't working much on the weekends. We noticed in the conversations with him and his family how much more time they seemed to have together, even though he was commuting back and forth for the time being, we started to notice how much happier they all were as a family. Kent and I talked a lot about this, and at the end of June he was the one to email his friend, with my encouragement and full blessing, and finally take him up on his offer.
Good news is Kent will be working remote from Atlanta until we sell the house, and in this market who knows how long that will be. But eventually we'll be trading in our sunscreen for snow boots, our leaf blower for one that blows snow, and buying us some of those three corned hats that are all the rage in Wisconsin, because despite what I said way back in fall, we are in fact moving to Milwaukee!
"Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!"
