Moving To New York (Part Two)

In my last post, I started the story of mine and Shani’s move to New York City.  CLICK HERE TO READ PART ONE

The following is the completion of that story…

In the time between calling the cops and parking the truck, Shani had located the apartment building and joined us on the corner. An Asian man and his family suddenly appeared among the group motioning over to his car, the Honda with the smashed mirror. I apologized over and over, and he just nodded again and again, apparently unable to speak English. I said that I would pay for it, but the communication barrier posed a problem. As we stood there near his car and he surveyed the damage, I took his information and promised to call him the following day to arrange payment for the broken mirror. We were able to get that much accomplished through broken English and improvised sign language. I returned to my conversation with the police officers.

Moving To New York (Part One)

In July of 2002, I was employed with Crunch Fitness, a health club chain based in New York City. At the time I was the Area Sales Director for the company’s 6 clubs in Atlanta. We had a pretty successful year to that point and there had been a shift in upper management in New York, creating a void for the same position in Manhattan. I thought for sure that they would either promote someone that lived in the city or hire someone more familiar with those particular clubs, so when I got the call offering me the position, not only was I floored, but I accepted it on the spot. Shani and I knew there was always the possibility I could get it, but no one had ever really mentioned anything concrete, certainly nothing along the lines of my having been the front-runner for the job.

I’ll never forget Shani’s response when I called to tell her.