Tank:  Super Old (a girl who used to blog made these) // Pants:  From Poland

I cannot believe it’s already been 3 months since we moved to Florida.  Time seriously flies.  I would normally say time flies when you’re having fun, but it wasn’t all fun over the past 3 months.  It has also been slightly stressful with me finding a job, and what not.  If you read my original post about us moving (here), and my 1 month update (here), I want to keep updating y’all!

THE GOOD

Finally Found a Job!

If you read my post (here) a few weeks ago you would know that I found my dream job.  Well, what I didn’t tell you was about my job before that.  I had announced on Instagram a few weeks prior that I finally found a job.  It was not a job where I could be creative, but they made it sound amazing and like a great company to work for.  Well, it was a HUGE and well known resort/hotel company.  They had a lot of really awesome travel perks, and great benefits.

However, the Marketing Specialist position that they had interviewed me for was terrible.  I thought I could attempt to basically be an annoying “cold calling” salesperson (I don’t really think marketing should be strictly associated with just sales), but I just couldn’t.  Bothering people while they are on vacation trying to enjoy their time, and not being sure if I could make enough money to pay my bills was not what I needed.

That’s when the job I have now, comes into play.  I was interviewing for both places at the same time and I was offered a higher salary/commission from the resort.  Turns out, the average salary that they told me was complete and total bullshit.  I shadowed a girl where I would be working and I would basically be making minimum wage.  There was no potential there.  They told me that the average salary at this location (which was mostly this girl because there was only one other employee at that location) and it sounded amazing.  However, when I actually went there and saw how she did, this job isn’t for someone who has a shit ton of bills and student loans to pay for.

I called the other job back and asked if they had filled the position and if we could talk.  They weren’t able to meet my salary requirement.  However, I decided to take a pay cut because I really wanted to work here.  I know that I talked about how it was my dream job, but it is also very stressful.  I’m not sure if this is because I don’t know the industry and I wasn’t trained (this tends to be a common thing at all of my jobs), or both.  I mean, in the new job’s defense they had asked me how I am with training and if I’m one of the people who needs to be held by the hand and I answered no, but I was basically thrown right into the chaos and expected to know where everything is and how we do things here.

It’s also a huge shift from what I have been doing since I got my degree.  I’ve been in customer service and always wanted to be in marketing, but because it’s been so long since I was in school doing simulations of marketing, I’m adjusting for sure!  Also, what I’ve noticed, is since Marketing is such a broad subject, EVERYONE’S description of what marketing is, is different.  I’m also working part time for my fiancé and his brother’s business, but I’ll talk about that in a later post, I have a whole entire post planned around that.

Favorite Places to eat

I wrote a post yesterday (here) about my favorite places to eat in Florida so far.  My fiancé and I have had an abundance of fresh seafood.  Even though I miss real pizza and taylor ham egg and cheese, the fresh seafood is so worth it!  Because this area is filled with tourism, there are a lot of places to eat at.  It’s unbelievable how much there is to try within a 10 mile radius.  There are also a lot of “millennial” type places, like fried ice cream and donuts galore haha.  There are so many different places to eat down here, that if you visit for vacation, I’d highly recommend planning your food ahead of time, or brainstorming about where you’d like to go.

House Tour

I know I promised y’all a house tour months ago, but we still aren’t fully moved in.  It’s still a mess because we have to rebuild quite a few things (like adding a shoe closet, and updating the laundry room) and I just don’t have room for some things because we need to build things.  I’m hoping to get a house tour prepared for at least some of stuff next week!  It won’t be the final one, but I feel like I owe y’all at least a little sneak peek!

THE BAD

Management Company

Yea, I don’t have words besides “I can’t even.”  We’ve had such a terrible experience.  Everything has been one big cluster with them.  They also changed management companies within the first two weeks of working with them.  I gave them the benefit of the doubt and said to myself that maybe they are also cleaning up the mess from the previous company.  However, once the representative that we have been dealing with stopped responding to us and started giving us attitude is when we had a huge issue.

I’m sorry, but if someone sends you pictures of a machete they found, which SHOULD have been caught by your “cleaning crew” who by the way did a shit job (I was cleaning for an entire week when we moved in, and I’m STILL finding glass and other garbage in our yard, along with door knobs that fall off, or things breaking) and you’re STILL giving them a hard time and not working with them, that’s really sad and unprofessional.

It’s May and we are still having people come in to repair things.  So far we’ve had the garbage disposal replaced, all of the locks and door knobs “fixed”, our oven fixed along with breaker to the oven fixed, our AC and dishwasher took a shit.  We also had to repaint the entire place because it looked terrible.  We’ve had people come in to fix the roof and sprinkler system, and we are still waiting for the window people to come fix the windows because two of them have condensation and another one is missing the other side of the window glass.  It currently only has the one side haha.

Both smoke detectors have had to be replaced, along with the dining room light because someone “fixed” it terribly which could have caused a fire potentially.  They also came in to update the outlets in the bathrooms and kitchen.  Along with so many more things.  Let’s also not forget about all of the garbage that was left behind when we moved in.  We were told that they left it there in case we wanted any of it, and if we didn’t that we would have to dispose of it.  Um, excuse me?  What makes you think I’m going to want to use a used shower curtain or any of the extremely old cleaning supplies, along with blinds that are so dirty they are almost black?  Those are just the things that I can currently remember haha.

Ashley Home Furniture:  Fort Walton Beach

Ugh, I don’t even know what to say here.  It has been an absolute nightmare getting the new furniture delivered.  We were told our furniture would deliver the week of February 25^th.  We were never spoken to about anything being late and finally the week of March 4^th I called to find out wtf was going on.  They stated they would deliver 3/11 because they didn’t have all the pieces.  They never showed up and never called on 3/11 that they weren’t coming.  I even called them, and they said they should be on their way and that they would call me back once they found out more.  Well no one called back and it’s probably because they were closing in 5 minutes.

Then on 3/12 they called and said they’d deliver between 2-5 and they didn’t show up until about 6pm.  Well, one of our dresser’s didn’t deliver because they didn’t have it yet, and a good portion of the furniture was damaged and had to be redelivered.  Fast forward to the week of April 15^th.  We got a call that they wanted to redeliver, and since I had gotten a job and couldn’t be home I told them they needed to get their manager to figure out when they could deliver.  That’s not my problem.

At this point I was furious and as a customer who furnished AN ENTIRE HOME with them, I felt as though they had no regard for me as a customer.  I’ve worked in customer service for a very long time, so I know what you should do in a situation like this.  They just seemed to not care.  Well, they finally said that they would deliver 4/27, however when we asked what they were delivering EVERYTHING. WAS. WRONG!  They said that the paper said that the dresser that was never delivered to begin with had delivered, and all of the items that needed to be redelivered were wrong.  We spoke with the representative and she said she’d get back to us.  She never did.

At this point I’m so angry and done that I don’t want any of the furniture.  Then on 4/27, I get a call from yet another person saying that they wouldn’t be able to deliver because their driver called out sick.  Well my response was that I wasn’t even expecting them because the girl was supposed to get back to us on what they were actually delivering.  When I spoke with this new representative everything that they had was STILL WRONG!

On 4/30 they called again and spoke to my fiance, and they were trying to deliver some kind of high table.  So, they weren’t even close on what they needed to deliver and redeliver.  There were no phone calls back or anything, but on 5/4, a lovely bill showed up in my mailbox for the ENTIRE ORDER.  Which is funny, because they told us we would get free shipping for all the trouble, and we never got some of our furniture.  I’m telling y’all, this has been a nightmare.

This would NOT fly in the northeast.  We would have gotten all of our furniture for free or at least discounted by this point.  We have actually purchased from Ashley Home Furniture and had a problem but it was fixed right away.  There is no excuse to be this dumb and unorganized.  I’m sorry for being so blunt, but I have had enough.  I’ll never recommend them, nor will I go back to them EVER!

Quality of Work in FL

As you can tell from the above two subjects, the quality of work here in Florida is not at all what we are used to.  This amount of errors and issues would have gotten many people fired in the northeast.  If you can’t do your job, no one feels bad for you.  You get a few chances to prove that you won’t let it happen again, or you get the boot.

Most people we have dealt with have cut many corners, ghetto rigged things that have made them unsafe, or are just so unorganized that they have no idea how to fix it.  I’m not making a general statement that the entire state of Florida is like this, but this has been our experience thus far.

The Pace

Oh the pace is sooooooooo slow here in Florida.  I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.  No one has a regard for other people’s time being precious.  No one treats anything as urgent.  If you go back to the management company, if I don’t tell them that fixing the oven or dishwasher is urgent, then they don’t have anyone call me for at least 2 weeks to fix it.  That’s not the way things should operate.

Maybe I’m just used to above and beyond being the standard.  On the other hand, the pace can be a little bit of a good thing.  Only because NJ has been named the most stressed out state, but it’s taking some getting used to.

IN CONCLUSION

Have we adjusted?

Nope.  I’m not sure if we ever will to be completely honest.  Everything is so different here.  Don’t get me wrong I’m so happy we moved here, but it’s just different.  However, I keep reminding myself that I spent a majority of my life living in NJ.  I’m being super critical only because I’m just so used to a specific type of living.  I’m used to everything needed to be done last week.  Even walking in a grocery store, my pace is 10 times faster than everyone.  I will also say, that it has been a positive experience as well.

I feel like I’m on a permanent vacation.  That might be why I also haven’t adjusted.  I just feel like I’m on really long vacation, or that I’m on a business trip.  My stress levels have decreased significantly.  Even when I was stressing out about finding a job (I’ll talk more about this topic in a future post) I still wasn’t as stressed.  I think this also might have something to do with the weather.  It’s nice and warm here, and it’s so different from NJ.

Do I recommend Florida?

Yes, absolutely!  As much as things are completely different and it has been extremely frustrating.  Life in general down here is so much better.  I’m less stressed out and the weather is beautiful.  NJ sucks.  The only thing I miss are my parents.  Other than that, there is no reason for anyone to stay in NJ.  We lived on the outskirts of NYC and even though we lived in the middle of nowhere, I still recommend Florida.  I mean, there being no state tax is amazing.

I took quite the pay cut.  However, I worked it out that it’s really not that much of a different because there is no state tax.  I mean, we are renting a house for much less than what we were paying for an apartment that is smaller than our current bedroom haha.  We are even paying less for water and electricity for an entire house!  That’s insanity.

STAY TUNED!

Stay tuned for my 6 month and 1 year update.  I will definitely talk about more of what I’ve talked about here.  I’m sure there will be so many more things to talk about too!

xoxo Monica

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