Back to Work

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.