AREA MAN WILL BE ONLY PERSON SURPRISED WHEN HE DOESN'T GET JOB OFFER FROM BYU-IDAHO

Sturkle explained that, unlike the Rexburg restaurant,

this is what a normal Applebee’s parking lot looks like

REXBURG, ID—In an imminent move that will surprise no one except Tom Sturkle, BYU-Idaho’s Humanities program will not be offering Dr. Sturkle the newly created Assistant Professor of Humanities job. 

When asked about her father’s chances of being offered a job at BYU-I, Sturkle’s 18 year-old daughter Holly said, “well, when he asked me to help him cut out slips of paper with quotes on them for the students to read, it was pretty clear that he doesn’t know how to teach college.” Holly explained that, “he hasn’t had any college teaching experience in his 10 years of graduate work at Brown, so I guess he thought he could just ‘wing it’ like it’s Elders Quorum or something. Knowing him,” concluded Holly, “he probably had the students compare pictures of the Salt Lake Temple with some Metallica song and then finished with his testimony—I can just see that train wreck in my mind right now.”

Sturkle’s 15 year-old son Kingston will also not be at all surprised when his father doesn’t get the job offer. “Dad is a great guy, don’t get me wrong,” commented Kingston, “but even though he is excited about it, I don’t think he should have told the search committee how thrilled he will be to start a Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer-Intersex-Ally student group right after he gets hired.” Kingston continued, “even I can see that as a problem.”

David Sturkle, a 34 year-old insurance salesman and active church member in Florida, will also experience no shock when his brother is not offered the job. David noted that “Tom is very smart, very smart, but when he gets nervous or excited, he talks about how his dissertation blended Mormon theology with French Feminism and an embodied Heavenly Mother and on and on and soon everyone gets pretty lost. I’m sure he ended up dragging the entire search committee down that rabbit hole, and, if it was anything like how our family felt two Thanksgivings ago, they will never want to see him again.”

Perhaps the least surprised person will be Tom Sturkle’s wife, Melanie. Melanie described how she discouraged him from telling the committee how Idaho is really just a stepping stone to a job in Provo and finally retirement in Hawaii. “Tom thought that they would respect and even expect that sort of honesty from such a top candidate. And when he got home,” continued Melanie, “it was much worse than I’d thought.” She went on to describe how “Tom called Rexburg the ‘lone and dreary world’, said that the town had the only Applebee’s in the entire world that anyone had ever described as ‘busy,’ and, finally, in his interview with the president, Tom gave him a few tips on improving his devotionals.” She finished by saying, “yep—we can take that job off the list!”

For his part, Tom said “I felt really good about the whole process, and I think I can really make a difference there.” He did add, with a small shadow of doubt that Tom easily dismissed, “thinking back on it, when I had my Skype interview with the General Authority, when he asked if I had a problem with pornography, I probably should not have said, ‘define problem.’”

REPORT UPDATE: Within 48 hours of his interview, Tom was notified that someone else had taken the job.