As most of you no doubt saw the other
day, I now have a job. Yes, someone actually decided to go ahead and
hire me for a part-time job (no luck on the full-time job yet, more
on that later). I have officially begun working at a Claire's store
at one of our nearby malls. Before I get started, I just want to say
that I will be talking about my reflections on what happened my first
day at work. Nothing I say is meant to reflect on the store or anyone
else who works there, just my own thoughts and feelings.
To say the least, it was quite and
interesting first shift. The past few Saturdays had not been that
busy, so the manager figured that this one would be a good day to get
me all orientated and trained and whatnot. Um, yeah, not really. It
was kind of the opposite of slow most of the time I was there. One of
the assistant managers even had to come in early because it got
pretty busy. I think the best way to describe the day is by telling
you what happened right after I showed up.
I walked in, and the manager
immediately asked if I could help pierce a little girl's ears, since
they wanted to do both ears at the same time. Wanting to show that I
was gung-ho and ready to prove that I was a hard worker I said okay.
She had me practice on some post-its, with not the greatest of
results, but now at least I had an idea of what I was going to do.
While I was waiting for her to come get me, the mom asked if I was
going to help. Not wanting to tell her that I had literally just
started working there, I slowly said that I was new but yes, I was
going to help pierce her daughter's ear. So the manager comes and
gets me, gives me the piercing gun, and shows me the dot on the ear
that is my mark. We count to three together, go, and...... I missed.
I pierced her ear, but off of my mark. The manager then had to take
it out and re-do that ear. The parents (and the little girl) were not
terribly happy, since they had waited a bit until I got there so that
it could be done at the same time. The mom was a little more
forgiving since she could tell that I not done it on purpose and felt
terrible about missing it mark, but the dad was not thrilled. He kind
of joked that I had better practice a lot more, but I could kind of
tell from his tone and body language that he was not happy with me. I
did apologize, and tried to comfort the little girl a bit. The
manager ended up giving them a discount, and I said to myself, “Yup,
you literally just started and already you lost the company money.”
Needless to say, it wasn't the greatest way to start off my new job.
After that the manager got me started
filling out paperwork and reading orientation stuff, while also doing
checkouts and paying attention to customers. At one point she had me
go in the back to fill out and read some of the stuff because it
started getting so busy and people would be asking me stuff that I
had no clue about. That was pretty much the rest of my day. Once I
had filled out all of the paperwork and read minimal stuff that was
the end of my orientation and I just went about doing purchases and
keeping the store clean until 5 when I got to go home. At one point,
I was actually reading a pamphlet in between helping customers and
processing purchases. Yeah, that was kinda crazy.
I felt incredibly lame at times,
because it felt like every five seconds I was finding someone to
answer a question for me or needing them to tell me how to do
something. I had no idea where anything was, since we were too busy
for the manager to give me a store tour. The best parts were when one
of them would move me aside so that they could do something for me in
a transaction instead of showing me how to do it myself.
This is a lot different for from my
cashier job at LNT. There, they sat me down upstairs and had me watch
orientation videos. I then listened to audio instructions and
practiced transactions with “play” checks and credit cards and
observed another cashier before even starting to cashier on my own.
Also, at my new job, there has never been a discussion as to my
specific availability or that I am still testing for police
departments, meaning that I will need some Saturday mornings/part of
the afternoon off. I don't know how long I have to work before I get
a break (I worked 5 hours yesterday and no real break). Maybe this
will be brought up the next time I work, or maybe I will have to
bring it up myself. There is also the fact that have no sort of badge
or anything identifying me as an employee. Again, hopefully this will
be remedied.
Another thing that's different is that
they have this on-call thing where I need to call in 2 hours ahead of
time to see if I will be working that day. I get the idea behind it,
but it is kind of annoying. With my workouts during the week I
essentially have to act as if I will be working, meaning that I will
have to go in earlier so that I have time to shower/clean-up/get
there if I am working, but call in the middle of my workout, and then
have nothing to do if I don't. Another example of this is Sundays.
Our church has two services – a 9am and an 11am – if I am on-call
I have to go to the early service and call one hour prior to my
scheduled time (since we open at 11 on Sunday), or I can call in and
maybe/maybe not get to go to the late service. The only benefit of
our Sunday schedule is that we close at 6, meaning that I will always
be able to go to my small group at 6:30/7.
I was also told that I don't just
stand behind the registers. Basically, if I'm not doing a purchase I
need to be walking around the store cleaning up and whatnot. There
were a couple times when everything was clean and no one needed
helping so I pretty much just awkwardly stood there. Maybe I'm just
getting used to the job or something, but I spent a good deal of my
shift feeling awkward /unsure of myself/lame-sauce. Hopefully things
will get better and most of this is just me re-adjusting to being
employed.
It's certainly not my dream job/a job
as a police officer, but at least it is something and I'm not so lame
that I still have to say I'm a 2 years+ college grad with no job and
nearly broke.
Now, an update on my full-time job
search. As I said earlier, I am still actively pursuing a career as a
police officer. Most candidate lists that departments draw up are
good for two years or until they go through everyone on the list. I
have now come to that point where departments I tested for two years
ago are starting to test again. This time around I'm trying to be a
little more selective and not just going for anyone who is testing
(pretty much what I did before). With the application fees (anywhere
from $15 to $40), it is starting to get expensive. I recently decided
to test for Bloomingdale for the second time but have decided that,
despite the fact that it is a town that I would like to work for, I
am through with them. They only take the top 30 scores from the
written test to go on to the physical test etc., and once again I
failed to make the top 30. I have now spent approximately $80 trying
to get them to hire me, but apparently I'm not good enough for them,
so that's that. I also recently learned that Glendale Heights will
testing again, and this makes me just a little bit not happy. As some
of you know, I have actually had a little bit of progress with this
department and they actually got to the background check on me. That
was back in February/March. I don't know if this means that all of it
was for naught and I literally have to start all over with them,
risking getting a lower position on the list and falling even further
behind. This is a department that I really
want to work for, though, so I guess that I am willing to risk it.
The
other weekend, I tested for Villa Park's police department. What was
really funny (at least to me) about this was the fact that the
written test was in the cafeteria of my high school, Willowbrook.
This was the first testing where I didn't have to look up the
location/directions on Mapquest, and knew exactly how long it would
take me to get there. It was weird sitting in the cafeteria, because
I haven't been to Willowbrook in at least a year, and hadn't been
inside since I saw the remodel nearly two years ago. On the way out,
I told the Chief that I had gone there for high school and he
laughed.
So
that's mostly what's been happening in my life recently. A little bit
of good, and a little bit of bad. Eh, that's life.
