Pretty City, Just Not For Me
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7/1/2007
I lived in Raleigh from 1997-1998 and couldn’t wait to leave that city for Atlanta. I first moved there from the Wash DC area and it was a major cultural shock what a “Can’t-do” town it was. People will tell you anything you want to hear and then leave you hanging and not follow through. At that time I was a seasoned administrative assistant professional with good skills and experience and it was such a battle trying to find a decent paying job to make ends meet. Most of the temp jobs I worked on (to pay the bills) were awful places to work.
I also noticed a stuffy snobby “state capital” mentality with the native Raleigh people. If you and your parents and grandparents weren’t born in Raleigh and raised in Raleigh then you just aren’t a true southern (even though I was raised in Fayetteville NC). At the present time I am proud to say I am half Yankee. All people talked about were restaurants and movies and nothing else. I felt I was treated as a Leper and stigmatized by a few of the native Raleigh women because I was a 30-something single woman with no children—I didn’t have the right social status in their eyes. I did not run into very many single men (bars and nightclubs are not my thing) but my impression of the few single men I did run into played games and jerked me around like I was supposed to be some desperate woman.
Atlanta may be more crowded and frantic but it didn’t take me long to find a decent job and it sure was easier to make friends and establish an extended family there.
Michelle | Charlotte, NC