What Could Have Been...

This is the story of what was almost my third corporate job.
It was late 1996. I had been working for IBM Global Services as a Lotus Notes developer for about 8 months, and I had quickly become something of a star developer within my small team. I was very disappointed one day to learn that one of my teammates was working on a new project that I would have enjoyed - it was a Notes integration project for the National Hockey League. Being the huge hockey fan that I was (and still am), I thought it would have been nice to have been placed on that team.
But I got over it (not that I had much choice). My teammate who was on the NHL project knew how I felt about hockey, and she let me know one day that the NHL was actually looking to hire someone as a regular employee to work on their Notes infrastructure. This kind co-worker had spoken to the hiring manager at the NHL and got me his fax number so I could send my resume. I was obviously very excited about the idea of a job with the NHL. So I quickly updated my resume and sent it over. I had to add a cover page, and not being a man of many words (you'd never know it from this - haha), I just put my name and number, and "Hockey is my life!" in fairly large font. OK, so maybe this was a little immature, but I was excited, and I figured my resume would speak for itself. Also, I was confident that I would ace any interview, as I had done well in several interviews at other places before that and I felt like I had the hang of it.
So the next week I got on a train to Manhattan from the nearby Brewster, NY station to go to my interview.
Other than a pretty neat display case with hockey memorabilia including a full-size goal and some signed jerseys, the NHL headquarters office was more or less like any other corporate office. My first interview was with the IT guy for whom I would be working. I did OK, because it was somewhat technical. The next interview was with his boss, and I was told it was just for him to see if he was comfortable with me. After sitting with this gentleman for a few minutes, the manager comes back into the office where I was talking to the supervisor and shoves my fax cover sheet in front of me and says "Don't do this." I was stumped. I did not know if he was joking or if he was actually annoyed that I had tried to be lighthearted in a fax. It was just cover sheet, after all. I just grinned and said "OK" sheepishly. At that point my confidence was well shaken, but I pulled myself together enough to get out without completely embarrassing myself. I learned that the job would actually include going to the home offices of each of the teams in the NHL to install applications for them. I thought this could be very good.
Eventually, they did actually offer me the position, but the salary they were willing to pay was only about 20% more than I was making at IBM. This sounds good, but the fact that it would mean either moving closer to Manhattan or commuting for more than 2 hours per day, plus investing in real business attire (and the dry-cleaning bills to go along with that) made it a very poor financial deal for me. Add to that the lengths to which the manager went in order to convince me that the job would be no fun at all, and not related to hockey at all, and I finally had to turn them down. It was one of the toughest decisions I ever had to make.
I still think about what could have been, had I taken that job. But that's water under the bridge (or ice) now.