Opening and closing, just like the big kids

Sunday I showed up at the store all by myself to count the money and open it, was the senior most person on staff all day and then closed the store. Kind of neat!

Been a while.

Well, this project didn't quite go as I had planned: write something new every day, maybe get away with something twice a week. And here I am, four months later, just now getting around to my second post.

I guess I should start by pointing out that retail is more demanding than I thought. The first week I had to get used to being on my feet for eight hours at a time, and the shine splints were so bad I could feel them in the soles of my feet. The monotonous tasks--stickering DVDs and CDs, putting disks into sleeves, filing them away, lifting heavy boxes of cases--were exhausting. And nothing is weirder than looking at the time after you've price-gunned several hundred DVDs and realizing that's how you've just spent three hours of your life. Voluntarily, and for money.

Customers are amazing. In retail, the store employee and the customer are like two completely different mammals, incapable of comprehending each other. Here's one of my favorite customer service moments.

My store has a huge Labor Day sale every year, and used DVDs are a certain dollar amount off. The sale doesn't apply to new DVDs. A man and his family wanted to buy a few DVDs and one new one--you guessed it, Hannah Montana. I assume he was only willing to pay for the DVD because he wasn't counting on spending the $16.99 plus tax. I rang him up, and he asked why the total was so high.

"You have to pay full price for the Hannah Montana DVD."

"But you guys have a sale today."

"Not for new DVDs."

"Why?"

Oh my god, I don't know, it's not my job to determine the terms of the sale, either pay the money for the DVD or leave it here and let me get to my one million other customers!

"It just is," I say.

"But it's $16.99!"

OH MY GOD, I KNOW, I'M THE ONE WHO RANG IT UP.

"It's not on sale," I say.

"It's not on sale?"

"No!"

He finally forks over his credit card. I print the receipt and he begins to angrily sign his name.

"So do you like your job?" he asks.

I don't know what he's getting at. I want so, so badly to snap "Not right now."

"No," I say, and swallow the rest.

"Maybe you should find one you really like, bitch!" he says, flicking the pen at my face.

I'm amazed. I have no idea what to say, so I start to laugh. He leaves his receipt and I tear it off the register and yell at him, "you forgot your receipt!"

"I don't want it, I'm never coming back!"

"Then you void your return policy!"

A lot's changed since labor day. Between then and now, I made friends with coworkers and transferred to a new store that's even further away from my house. Yes, I did get a raise, so I can afford the extra gas, thank you.

It was a weird experience to be transferred. One of my bosses was beginning to dislike me. I could tell when one day he yelled at me and three other coworkers for being "slow, fucking slow fucking slow--the three slowest people in the store" in front of other customers. He does this when he's about to fire someone. That, and he began posting "now hiring" posters. That, and he told all of his shift leads to hire "hot girls only." I knew my days were numbered when a cute, petite Asian and a stacked brunette showed up for work one day. The plan was to work my ass off while looking for another job--to stave off the inevitable for as long as possible so that I could have enough time to line up something else. It was a sad couple of days: I liked the people I worked with, the job became more fun, and facing the prospect of being fired yet again was more than I wanted to handle. Could I just not be fired for fucking once in my life, I would think.

Luckily, one of my managers got me over at his store. And as the senior most employee, I get the most "assistant to the regional manager"-esque position a gal could ever hope for. Opening and closing duties and a raise. Not bad for a gal who doesn't like her job, right? For the last two weeks, my manager and I have been working on getting this store ready for opening day, which was yesterday. And so far, the going's good.

I know it's not the most exciting entry, but there's some important stuff in here. At least now you all know where I'm at, oui? Yes.

This was fun. I'll try to get around to doing some more later.

Good night, my public!

Allow me to introduce myself.

Hi,

This bit of writing is about my life as a post-undergraduate student.

I'm twenty three, a white female, and I have just moved back home. I wish I could say it was my first time, but it's actually the third. I moved back for six months after my first year of college and attended community college for a semester. After moving into my own apartment and attending a new university, I studied abroad for a semester and upon returning, and having spent all my money, I moved in with my parents a second time for my final semester. Then I graduated last December. Feeling fresh, vivacious, and newly infused with a can-do spirit that only a college diploma can bestow, I moved into a house with my best friend Maggie and my boyfriend Aaron. In the six months we managed to keep the house, I couldn't achieve gainful employment. Since April, I've been fired three times and have had four jobs. I've never done the math (well, counted), but I would bet that I sent my resume to about 50 people on Craigslist. With no job and with our landlord selling our house, the three of us decided to go our separate ways. We had too, really.

I used to want to be a writer, so I had applied—and managed to retain for a month—a relative dream job working for a magazine. But I was soon revealed to be vastly under qualified, and it was only a matter of time before I got the axe. I've worked as a secretary, a waitress, and a hostess. Now I'm waiting tables and working part-time in a used DVD and video game store called Entertainmart.

I still want to write. I also want some money, so I'm not quiting either of my day jobs (Actually, I took on a third, joining the roster for a babysitting service so that on my days off, I can try to make a few extra dollars.) But, like David Rakoff said, and like I learned during my time at the magazine, “[w]riting is like pulling teeth. With your dick.” After majoring in English, I don't feel like I should stop. I don't want to stop, really. That's where my reason for writing this blog comes from. I don't think of myself as a reporter from the front lines of a recession. I don't know that I want to contribute to any of the depressing conversations about higher education that merely seem to crush the soul rather than enlighten my outlook. I simply just don't think I should stop.

This is a place to for me to narrate some of the episodes of my life since graduating. I hope that out of this process, these fractured sets of experiences will begin to look like a whole, and that the complete set takes the shape of a story rather than a set of random, first-world tragedies. No matter how poor, lonely or pathetic a person can feel, there is a small, rapt audience hanging out inside her head, and this is my attempt to honor them as well.

Hope you like it.