The first was just after I moved to California in 1986. My boyfriend, a software engineer, was following the Silicon Valley gold rush. Everyone knew why he was moving to the Bay Area, but when they asked me why I was going with him, I felt something more than “the weather and the sushi” was called for. I was in my twenties and had a degree in writing, so I would say “I want to work for a magazine.”

“Any magazine in particular?” they would ask. I only knew about one that was published in the Bay Area.

“Locus Magazine,” I said.

Yeah, right, a voice inside me would mutter.

I spent my first few days in Berkeley happily discovering the local bookstores — Cody’s, Shakespeare and Company, Dark Carnival and The Other Change of Hobbit. It was at that last store that I saw a notice on a bulletin board in the back. Locus Magazine was hiring.

One of the store’s owners, Debbie Notkin, noticed me writing down the information and came over. “I wouldn’t,” she said. “Charlie’s impossible as a boss.”

“Oh?” I asked, vaguely.

“You should talk to someone first. You should call…” She gave me a name and wrote down the number for me. “She can tell you all about what it’s like working there. Nobody lasts there more than a couple of years.”

I never called that other name. I called the number on the job notice and got an immediate callback.

The next day I sat in an armchair in Charlie’s living room. “You don’t cry easily, do you?” he asked, near the end of the interview.

“No,” I told him, truthfully. There was a slight, awkward pause as I considered asking him if he cried easily. A boss I’d had in Greensboro, the owner of a very successful restaurant, had been a nice man, but he’d cried sometimes. Usually it was after store meetings, when he’d mention something like the fact that we were using commercial cleaner instead of white vinegar while wiping down the tables. He’d burst into tears and say we were all ruining him, and we’d all gather around to tell him everything would be all right and we loved him. 

I kept cagily quiet. Asking a question implying I had made my last employer cry would send the wrong message.

Charlie hired me, I agreed to come in the following morning, and just as I was about to rise from my chair, the hinges of one of the old fashioned, adjustable standing lamps nearby gave way. The lamp fell, bonking me neatly, but not painfully on the head. I refused to take it as an omen.

And so, I got my “dream job.”

Debbie’s prediction did not come entirely true. I lasted, not just a couple of years, but four. I did leave — as so many did — with much yelling and slamming of doors. But I was never, never sorry for having worked there.

Over a decade would pass before I got another “dream job,” one I liked as much as I’d liked working at Locus. That time, nobody asked if I cried easily and nothing hit me in the head during the interview. I stayed for twenty years.