First and Last Day on the Job

On Saturday I set out to get this job search fully underway. I put on my nice clothes, grabbed 30 copies of my resume, and headed out to pound the pavement. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I figured I'd go into every shop and cafe I could find until I ran out of resumes.

Soon after leaving the second place I went into, the manager I had talked to came running after me. "I just had someone call in sick," he said. "Would you like to take that shift and I can see how I like you?" Sure! If he was willing to test me out for a shift, I figured I could probably get the job pretty easily. To find a job within the first 10 minutes of looking sounded pretty good to me.

The store was an Italian imports store selling lots of designer label clothes, accessories, and perfume. I was "trained" by a Finnish girl who basically showed me around the store and told me that all I needed to do was talk to customers enough to keep the manager happy. She was on working holiday also and had been at the store for three weeks. I asked her if she liked the job and she said no, it was the most boring job in the world, but she could come in hungover, so she didn't care that much. There was another girl working who was from Korea, and she barely spoke any English. She said it was her first day working at the store, and she seemed bored out of her mind as well. Hmmm... Not boding well for the employment situation.

My job was to greet customers and try to sell stuff to them. Selling stuff is not my forte. I am great with customer service when someone comes to me with a question (thanks, CIC!), but I'm just not good at trying to convince people to buy something that they don't need. I also got the feeling that a lot of the designer label clothes were actually fakes; makes it a little harder to sell something you don't trust. Everyone who came in of course said they were just browsing, and knowing how much I dislike hovering salespeople, I just left them alone. Then the manager would tell me to talk to them more. The Finnish girl who I was working with was really nice, but we got yelled at for talking to each other. So I did a lot of refolding clothes and standing around.

Man, this was the most boring job in the world. I don't think I have ever been more bored in my entire life. I have had pretty interesting jobs up to this point in my life, but having worked a lot of 6-hour summer shifts at the Pierpont Commons front desk, I figured I could handle boring. But at least at Pierpont I was sitting down. This was a lot of standing around pretending to be busy. The Finnish girl said she worked 7-hour shifts, 5 days a week. No thank you!

Finally the manager asked me what I thought and if I thought I could sell clothes. I said no. He said he wanted to hire me, but the thought of standing around in that store for even another 10 minutes made me want to kill myself. I said I'd "think about it," and left with the intention of never ever returning.

Although it would have been nice to already have a job all secured, I think the boredom of working there would have killed me. I also figure that if it's that easy to find a job, I can be a little more selective in what kind of work I take. I already have a couple of interviews set up over the next few days, so hopefully I will have something by the end of this week. And if all else fails, I can go crawling back to that horrible store.

On Sunday I went to the beach.