Suddenly A New Year

January 11, 2010 · Filed under The Every Day Life

Oh how much I have been sucking at keeping this site going.

So much has happened since my last post…It’s been almost four months! I’ll try to keep everything concise and organized so this post isn’t too long.

1. Walgreens – I feel comfortable writing the company name of the drug store I worked at because I no longer work there. At this job I was able to do something I genuinely enjoyed. I really loved being around all the beauty products and I enjoyed helping the customers find what they needed. It made me realize that I would love a job in the beauty industry. Whether that would mean being a make-up artist, esthetician, or even working at a beauty counter.

I have also really started taking more pride in my personal appearance. I’m wearing more make-up and wearing my hair down more. It feels good. I really like doing little things that show I care about myself.

Also at Walgreens I made some good friends. It was nice going to work knowing I would see people I was genuinely close to. I got a new bestie out of that job! It’s hard to complain about that.

Another positive thing that came out of the job was learning how to use coupons to my advantage. I really know how to look for deals now and work sales to my advantage when possible. That’s a good thing! It’s really been helpful.

Now to the negatives (and you knew it was coming). Working at Walgreens sort of felt like I would imagine working at Wal-Mart would feel…only the company didn’t feel successful. It became apparent very quickly that this job was very different from The Pet Store. My first week there I was working along side another employee and she was explaining to me the department and how things worked. She was helping to train me! Immediately the manager on duty came over and started saying that we couldn’t be standing around talking and we needed to break it up. That was one of the first indicators that something was amiss.

I could go on and on about my experiences there. The bottom line is they were super uptight. They hated employees being friends with one another. We were never able to talk without getting in trouble. They never praised us for good work. I had customers compliment me to the manager and call in about me and I heard nothing about it from the manager. They actually seemed resentful of how much the customers liked me. I got written up three times also while working there. The first time I was scheduled for a day that wasn’t my availability (I worked at The Pet Store that day) and I couldn’t find someone to cover the shift. The second time I was trying to do them a favor by working a day shift, but I was scheduled at The Pet Store so I would have to be 2 hours late. I told them 4 days in advance, left my number and told them to call me if there was a problem. I heard nothing and two hours into the shift I got called into the office and received a write up. The third one I actually received immediately after I put in my two weeks and really confirmed my decision. That one was for being late 3 times to work. Despite the fact that it was right before Christmas and I had to drive by a mall to get to work…and I called them.

The nail in the coffin two things that happened at the same time. The first being hour cuts, which cut my hours completely in half. Also the head of the cosmetics felt like I was trying to sabotage her department by not ringing up enough sales and was going to move me out of the department.

So if I was getting half the hours, not doing what I enjoyed, getting written up and not even allowed to talk during work? It was time to go.

Walgreens goes down as the worst job I have ever had and I once had to clean poo out of a urinal at a past job. Yeah.

2. The Pet Store – Yup, still there! Things are still going well. The managers actually manage unlike the other job and things flow. I got moved over to Pet Care so I’m no longer just ringing people up. I’m over cleaning cages and selling pets. The hours are really good for me. It’s usually something like 6-11 in the morning so I get the whole rest of the day. I’ll still need another job to supplement the hours, but I’m still happy working there and it’s almost been a year. I’m so glad I kept this job at while I was at Walgreens.

3. Apartment – Still there, kind of waiting for the year to be up so KC and I can move on. We’re definitely at the stage where we are getting more serious and we’re ready to settle in with each other. All our roommate went home for the holiday so we had a good amount of time to nest at home with each other. It solidified that we’re past the roommate point in our lives and we’re so ready to be on our own together. So we have till July to save and get things in order. Then we’ll be looking for somewhere nice, but easily affordable so we can stay there a while. I don’t want to keep moving around. Hopefully we’ll be able to find something we’ll be happy with.

4. Job Search – Ugg!! Trying to find a full time job completely sucks and makes me feel worthless. It’s been almost a year since I was laid off from my office job and started looking for a new full time position. It’s just not fun and I’m going to keep trying, but it just really makes me worry. I’m going to take a class at the Career & Technical Institute on resume writing and job hunting. Hopefully that will help spotlight what I might be doing wrong and what I can improve upon.

Alright that’s enough for now…more soon.