It's the OCD in me. I walked away for five minutes, possibly less, and realized it was going to kill me until I at least had another entry. So I decided to write about my adventures in retail a bit, which I'm sure I'll do again in the future, because there is soo much material there. Seriously.
I have worked retail since before I was legally allowed to work. I got hired at 15 years and 50 weeks by a drug store owner who just didn't put me on the books for two weeks, and I continued in retail for 19 and a half years, until I had this new little peanut, who I am trying the stay-at-home thing with for a while.
I don't plan on going back to retail. The main reason is because the hours suck, and at 35 years of age, I am tired of working nights and weekends. I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do next, but it will hopefully involve a desk and a daily rush hour commute.
The drug store was an interesting place to work. They had this God-forsaken cassette tape they would play over and over that played horrible random bad songs, mostly from the 70's, and every few songs these girls would sing, "Thriiiiift, raaaadiooooo." I always pictured them in the studio together, the three of them, harmonizing, while one did that hand thing where it goes up up down, along with the harmony. There was one good song on the tape, In My Life by the Beatles, which I looked forward to hearing the entire shift. The manager, who was also the head pharmacist, was named Wayne, and he smelled of vegetable soup. I hated the old people that shopped there. One time, I got yelled at by some old lady who was angry that we charged sales tax on greeting cards....um, not a necessity lady. One time, I got yelled at by an old guy who wanted his prescription delivered and got annoyed half way through my question asking. I hung up on the old fuck. I hope it wasn't heart medication...
There was a long period of time where I loved retail. It started because it was the late 80's and I was in high school and my short term goal was to work in the mall, where the cool kids worked. After I worked at the drug store, I got a job at a store called No Name. It's long since out of business, but think of Wet Seal, but set in the 80's. It was cheap, disposable, trendy clothing. Remember Traffic stretchy jeans in every color of the rainbow? Yeah, we had them. My favorite was sidewalk sales, because I got to stand out front of the store by the table of cheap crap and socialize.
When No Name started doing poorly, my hours got cut down to like 2 days a week, so I picked up a second job next door at Stride Rite. I freaking LOVED that place. I don't know why, either. I just really liked that job. I kept it throughout college and well after No Name went out of business.
I worked at PacSun for a while after that. It was so long ago, all they had was men's clothes...which they made the girl's wear too. They also made us tuck our tees into our jeans, which was silly. But it was my first job as an assistant manager, so I tucked my damn shirt in and I liked it.
Then Hot Topic opened upstairs, and I was in love. I stalked the district manager there until he hired me for a store that was 2 1/2 hours away, and I moved to North Jersey to work there. I also LOVED that job. I stayed with HT for 9 years. And I will surely talk more about that in years to come.
After I sadly left the old HOTT, I worked for H&M. Wow, is that a terrible company. Freaky Swedish bastards. If you have shopped there, and wonder why everyone there is such a miserable rude fuck, it's because they hate life and are probably close to suicide. Unless they are Swedish, because then they are jolly and happy and think the Swedish god Sphen smiles upon them.
After 2 1/2 long years with them, I moved on to Armani Exchange, where I stayed until Spawn#2 was born. And here I am. Now, when I talk about my jobs you can look back at my resume here and know what I am talking about.
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