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This is hopefully the last time I work on Black Friday

November 30, 2010 in Random Musings, Rants, Work with 0 Comments

In my last post I mentioned how I have been working in retail for six years and how I started in November a week and a half before the biggest shopping bonanza, the Black Friday. I admit that I was a bit terrified at working Black Friday, specially OPENING on Black Friday at the MPU department running people’s purchased merchandise to their cars and loading it up for them. I worked Black Friday at MPU in 2004 and 2005, and during those two years I witnessed many nasty and inconsiderate people and those two experiences dictated how I would see the Holiday season for years to come: with bitterness and anxiety.

I am going to admit to some bitter truths on my part: I don’t really hate retail during the holidays. I’m just highly annoyed with it since it takes away from the spirit of the season and makes people act all frantic. Plus, too many Christmas carols.

I know! I constantly complain about working in retail and about rude customers so I must really loathe it, no? Well, not really. I don’t like working in retail and want to move far from it as fast as I can because working in retail is not for me and I am not utilizing my talents to their full potential working for $10.25 an hour. Rude customers affect you at that moment and after a few moments of venting and re-telling the story to friends and co-workers they become just that: a story to laugh and shake your head at because you’re probably never going to see these people ever again and if you do they won’t remember you or what made them snap at you.

You would think that because of the stress of holiday shopping that I would have loads of stories about bad customer experiences during the holiday shopping season. Sadly, I don’t. It’s the one saving grace of the 4th retail quarter; no bad customer experiences. I think the long hours, crazy schedule, and just out right zaniness of management makes up for the fact I haven’t had a customer blow up on me because I ran out of a certain item or because we don’t carry a certain thing while another retailer does. I just see a lot of busy people who like to make a mess and that I have to stay past my scheduled time in order to clean it up.

I remember a few years back, my friend Becky and I ventured to International Mall to browse around and to play with the Macs at the Apple store when we saw this sign at Nordstrom’s about how they would not put up holiday decorations until after Thanksgiving unlike other retailers who start in late September early October, almost three months before Christmas Day. I remember we did a small cheer at their noble effort to not alienate more people at the commercialization of the holiday. Yes we did note the irony of a retailer not wanting to promote more commercialization of Christmas.

That’s the part that I will not miss about working retail during the holidays: just how hectic the company is about making it feel like holidays and just being outright too demanding and focused on schedules to get things ready so that we are at our full shopabbility when the doors open at 4 a.m. on the Day After Thanksgiving. Sad thing is, that no matter how much a retailer plans they have no idea what a shopper is going to go for year after year. I know we have made displays and created an experience that says “SHOP ME! I HAVE GREAT BUYS” and it goes untouched during most of the day while something else that we didn’t order much of is sold out in a few hours and you’re scrambling to make customers happy.

Shoppers are crazy, folks.

My lest favorite part of the holiday retail season is the constant bombardment of Christmas carols. You see, I like Christmas carols. I think they’re fun and cheery, and make you feel good inside. I don’t particularly care for the remakes of traditional Christmas carols by contemporary artists or that they create their own Christmas carols. They mostly suck and drive me up a wall. Starting in October my store mixes their regular store music with Christmas carols. You get two regular songs per Christmas carol in order to get you used to the full onslaught of Holiday music that you’re going to receive. Usually this happens the day after Halloween, and on Black Friday the store’s music switches too only Christmas carols.

It has made me loathe Christmas carols. I don’t want to loathe Christmas carols, but I do. I don’t want to listen to them at all nowadays because I get bombarded with them at work and to add insult to injury my parents play Christmas carols at home ALL THE DAMN TIME. I can’t get away from them! They’re everywhere!

I want this to be my last Black Friday that I ever have to work again in retail. I am about done with it all despite being a pro at it. I don’t want to wake up at 3 am to be at work at 4 am for a shift that won’t end until at least 5 pm, then be right back in at work at 5 am the next day and the day after that or to even work on Thanksgiving like I did this year. I want to be able to relax and have the opportunity to go on a holiday for the Holidays to see my step brothers and their families, or maybe just spend Christmas and Thanksgiving somewhere out of state. I can’t do that while working retail; we aren’t allowed time off from November until the first of the year.

I’m crossing my fingers and wishing that this is the last time I do any of this. I’m not even going to shop on Black Friday after I get out of retail. Its crazy! I don’t need the stress and hassle of it all to save a few dollars here and there. Plus, sales are better at other times of the year, you just have to be a savvy shopper to recognize them.

Six Years

November 13, 2010 in Personal, Random Musings, Work with 1 Comment

I celebrated my six year anniversary at Sears today. In a way it has been quite the bittersweet six years working in retail. I met some nice people, met many that are decent, met even fewer rotten apples and have both met a lot of good customer, bad customers, but mainly customers who you didn’t make ripples in the pond. Those are good customers.

I still remember my first day at Sears. I rolled up at 7 am in a raggedy pair of jeans and a beat up sweatshirt; I was going to be working on unloading a truck that day. I was met at the door by this guy I knew from high school, Jeff, and my ex-best friend Don. They told me where I was to work, and introduced me to some of the crew that worked in the loading dock.

I signed some paper work, told I was scheduled until 3 pm that day and that is when I got to work. It was the hardest I had ever worked in my life. I got hit in the head by a 19 inch Sylvania television, I was almost run over by a forklift, and I almost killed myself just doing work there in general. I was hurting when I got home. I was covered in dirt and sweat, and it was a cool 50* F through most of the day. After I went back home, took a hot shower and ate some dinner, I crashed for the day. I went to sleep at 6pm and did not wake up for 12 hours later so I could repeat the process all over again.

For several weeks that is all I did: work in the receiving dock and unload freight, but then I was told I needed to learn how to handle merchandise pick up in case I needed to fill in for someone. I learned it, and learned it quick. I had to. I was hired on as a seasonal and needed to do everything in my power to make sure they kept me. I impressed them enough that I was kept on after the holidays, and I ran merchandise pickup during the days by myself, occasionally working a night shift here and there.

Three months later I was given full time and a year after that I was off working in the marketing/pricing team. Four months later I was promoted to lead, then 9 months later after my department was eliminated I was shifted to work in hardware/lawn & garden as their pricing and merchandising lead where I stayed for another year and a half until I got tired of being in middle management and went back to being a regular associate. Two and a half years later I transferred to the shoe department where I currently work.

It has been a topsy-turvey ride where I work. Sometimes I loved it, and others I loathed it. I took the job way too seriously at times and it cost me with putting myself in a hole at SPC, a whole that is too deep to get fully out of (no one’s fault but mine, folks. I take full responsibility for my irresponsibility), and other times I took it for granted. I have relied on this place too much at times, and not enough in other times. It has been a crutch and a life line. I complain about working there, and I complain when I do not have enough hours to survive.

Six years. I have learned to see the place as it is: just a job, nothing else and nothing more. I am solely responsibly for augmenting what it will ultimately mean for me and like any experience you walk away with positive and negative lessons learned. In all seriousness I have a lot to thank Sears for. Without them I would be unemployed at the moment, struggling even more than I am, and probably even more down on myself than I am currently.

I try not to think about where my life would have turned out if I only stayed seasonal and went after another job. There is no point in trying to second guess life: what is done is done and there is nothing you can do about it now. You either play the hand that was dealt to you and make something out of it, or complain and remain stuck in the same rut for years.

I’ve chosen to just play the game and see where it will take me. So, thank you Sears for the past six years! I say this every year, but I am hoping not to make it seven! No hard feelings, its just that I have outgrown you and I need to leave the nest and do things on my own. I’ll always be fond of you, even though I plan not to step foot in any Sears for at least a year after my last day.

Dr. Scourfield McLauchlan

August 21, 2010 in Civic Engagement, Personal, School, Work with 0 Comments

Dr. Scourfield McLauchlan, Lily Ledbetter, Naomi and I.

Coquina 212 was the room in which I met Dr. JSM ¹ for the very first time. This was my very first day at USF St. Petersburg during the Spring 2009 semester and I was excited and scared to be in a class with the rest of my Political Science peers. You see my first class that day was Modern Art History and I was anxious to have the rest of my political science classes ². I was curious to see who the typical political science student was, and I was anxious to make friends and to find out if I really did belong in this class. Would I be smart enough to not only be at this school but to contend with the rest of the students in this class and all my other classes?

Five minutes after the start of class Dr. JSM walks in with this trolley. She introduces herself and she starts conversing with some of the students as if she is already familiar with them and it turns out that she is– they had taken ConLaw I with her the previous semester. My heart starts to race because here I am thinking that I needed to take that class in order for me to even understand ConLaw II! After a quick introduction she reassures all of us that it is not necessary to have been in ConLaw I in order to take ConLaw II, but I am still scared. I am already for seeing my doom you see. I have a bad habit of always thinking the worst when I am in a new an unfamiliar situation.

After explaining the class structure and going through the syllabus, we began the Supreme Court tour slide show and later on we would play Supreme Court bingo for a prize ³. The intention of Supreme Court bingo is simple: to get to know your neighbor. You answer one question on the bingo square and you introduce yourself to another classmate to get another answer until you get five in a row. Its quite neat if I do say so myself. The prize can be a number of things that she has in her office, and its usually a book, a gavel pencil or a pocket Constitution.

I’ve never won any of these SCOTUS bingo games in all the classes that I have taken with her. Mostly because I was shy and I kept to myself. You have to remember I was petrified of her, the class and the students! I was 23 and probably the oldest student there thinking I was going to fail in spectacular fashion. I had no time to chit chat and make friends. These people would eat me alive if I wasn’t careful.

So I hit the books. I took my time in doing my very first brief, and I read all the cases as best as I could. Somethings I understood and some I didn’t. I got a check on my first brief and the only comment that she wrote on it was that I needed to double space the brief ⁴. Stupid mistake. I have to admit I felt dumb after that comment. How can you forget to double space?

Anyways, After that there were some weeks in which I was prepared and others in which I wasn’t. Dr. JSM randomly calls on people to either give out the facts of the case or to comment on the opinions written in the cases. Sometimes I knew it and sometimes I didn’t and it was only once in which I was called on in which I did not know what I was talking about so I looked at the book and just read from there. I felt like a doofus. I’m quite thankful that she is not really stern and doesn’t berate you when you don’t know something, but I’m the type of person that does not like to look like a fool in front of others, specially not infront of her and my peers. I had something to prove: that I belonged there, even though the only person I needed to prove that to was my self. I just didn’t know it then.

I over stressed myself for her midterm ⁵ and had no idea what to write for her legal research paper. I eventually settled on students first amendment rights after briefly contemplating on writing on the constitutionality of strip clubs. Yeah, those would have been some really FUN Google and LexisNexis searches.

I was nervous writing my paper and I thought it was a bit rushed and that parts of it didn’t make sense, but I finished it and turned it in. I was getting more and more comfortable in the class and was known as the guy who went ahead and briefed all potential cases that we had to turn in for the next week. I remember the day that I was handed back my paper and her telling me that it was the best paper of the class. I was flabbergasted. Speechless and walking on cloud 9. The only logical thing to do at the time was to tell everyone. I wasn’t expecting it and it gave me things huge rush of confidence.

I decided to take her Practical Politics class and to intern for her while working for the Center for Civic Engagement. I remember her being so pleased that I wanted to intern and I was scared, once again. This is her baby! What if I screw up? What if something goes wrong? It would be all on me. Scary. It turned out to be the best thing that I have ever done. That summer semester was fantastic. I met so many people I did so many things and I found a really good friend in Naomi while we both interned for the CCE and the Steve Kornell campaign. It truly was a life changing experience.

During that summer two things became even more clearer to me: after being stubborn and saying I didn’t want to go to law school I decided that it would be the best thing to do for me. Second, Dr. JSM became that professor that I would always admire and would always compare future professors to.

Dr. JSM has her groupies and I am not afraid to say that I am in that camp. People from different disciplines are attracted by her aura and take her classes joyfully. Why? Because she is a fantastic teacher of course! She gives out so much information to you about a case, she has experienced so much and really, really cares about all her students and wants to see them succeed. Her office door is always open and she is willing to talk to you about anything.

Time and time again she has proven to be the smarted individual that I know and the person whose respect I crave the most. I’ve always wanted that from a teacher. I wanted that in high school, but only sort of got from my Spanish professor ⁶. Ever since Naomi and I have taken over the CCE, the relationship that we have with her has been more than that of a student-teacher. Its even more than being colleagues, as she once said of us, but that of friends? Its quite weird how to explain it.

Being her student and working for Dr. JSM has been my favorite part of my stay at USFSP. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great teachers on campus, but none of them have made me want to be more. Because of her classes I have developed a love for law and an aspiration to one day practice it or teach political science. Through her classes I have met some good friends and because I joined the CCE I have been called (along with Naomi) an asset and indispensable to the campus. I have grown more under her guidance than I would have if I had not taken her ConLaw II class.

I look back at my first day in her ConLaw II class and shake my head at my sillyness. Without her and that class I would be a completely different person. I like the person that I am right now. I like where I am headed in life despite not really knowing the path. Thanks to her guidance I have spoken and experienced things that I wasn’t able to do before or was too scared to. Thanks to her I have matured immensely and I owe her so much more than a simple blog post.

A few days before Naomi and I last saw her we wondered if she might cry at our very last meeting. What I didn’t want to say, but can say now is that if she cried I might cry myself. I actually feel pretty bad that I didn’t give her a proper goodbye and that the last time I spoke to her before she went left campus was on the telephone. I wanted to give her a hug and wish her good luck in person and to thank her for everything.

I like to think that even years after I have moved on from USFSP and have eventually moved away from Florida, that Dr. JSM and I will still email each other, bouncing ideas back and forth between us. Who knows, I might even get to call her JA like her close friends already do!

In short, thank you for everything. You are an inspiration to many and I wish you much fun and excitement in Moldova. I look forward to that lunch when you get back in the spring.

P.S.- For those of you who are interested in her experiences as a Fulbright Scholar teaching abroad, the link to her blog can be found on my blog roll.

Notes:

As all her students refer to her ↩
My art history class is one of the graduation requirements that we all must take. It was at 9am in the morning and the subject was incredibly boring to me so I often skipped it. I took three other classes that same day: ConLaw II: Civil Rights and Liberties, International Organizations and Florida Politics. The latter three classes were all three hours long, which meant I was often in school from 9am to 9pm. It was a long and exhausting day. ↩
This is quite neat. She worked for the office of the curator at the Supreme Court and when she was interviewed she had a private tour of the SCOTUS. She took a million picture and at the start of all her law related classes she does the tour plus the SCOTUS bingo. ↩
It was Barron vs. Baltimore 32 U.S. 243 (1833) in which the question was whether state governments are bound to the Fifth Amendment’s requirement for just compensation in cases of eminent domain. ↩
I got a B. I thought I was going to fail ↩
Mrs. Barrett, or Sra. Osolo as she affectionately called herself, will forever be my favorite high school teacher. That’s right! You’re forgettable Dr. E! ↩

Rant: I don’t care about Steven Slater

August 10, 2010 in Random Musings, Rants, Work with 0 Comments

It seems that the two biggest news stories for today are the death of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens ¹ and that of Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who snapped at a rude passenger then used the airplane’s intercom and cursed her out and proclaimed he was done. Then he proceeded to grab a beer and exit the plane using the emergency slide.

Now he is considered a cult her0. I don’t think what he did is much to be celebrated to be quite honest with you nor am I justifying the horrible attitude of the female flight attendant who was the catalyst that caused him to snap. I work in retail and I have encountered many rude customers and I have also encountered many who are just wonderful, but you never lash out at them. I repeat: YOU NEVER LASH OUT.

I’ve never been a fan of the statement that the customer is always right, because you’re not. You have responsibilities as a representative of your company and rights, and one of those rights is being treated with respect. Now I understand that we all have been at one point or another been treated harshly by management or by customers and wanted to lose our cool, but you haven’t. Really what does losing your cool have to do with anything? Let me tell you about some of the things that I have dealt with being in retail: I have been yelled at, threatened with legal action, mocked for my age, cursed at, and even spit on. Every one of those offenses I have remained cool and collected. That is all one can do when in retail really. It does nothing for me to get angry and fire back at the customer because in the grand scheme it really does not matter at all.

So while you’re currently trending on Twitter and are a cult hero for many disgruntled employees, how you handled your situation has made you look like a bigger jackass than the impatient woman that hit you with her suitcase and told you to “f*ck off”.

Steven Slater: Cult Jackass.

Notes:

While I did not agree with Ted Steven’s politics and generally found him to be a frustrating individual with his bullheaded attitude, I put my politics aside when it comes to matters of death no matter if its a result of natural causes or by freak accidents like a plane crash. Whatever your thoughts on him personally, you can’t deny that he was one of the Senates most famous Senators. Whether you liked him or not he did many great things for his state. ↩

Service Learning vs Community Service

May 27, 2010 in Civic Engagement, School, Work with 0 Comments

Okay, so you may be asking yourself exactly what are the differences in being civic engaged. Well the answer is very simple and it all depends on what it is that you are doing with a local organization. At USF-St. Pete our mission includes being an active member of the local community and creating citizen scholars who are engaged and improve the community.

Ever since I started working/interning/volunteering for the CCE I was made aware of the difference between interning and community service. I thought it was always the same thing. Each campus through out the nation that has a center/office like ours focus in a specific way of civic engagement, whether that is mainly community service through student organizations, internships, or the combination of guided field placements that relate to course curriculum. The latter is what USF St. Pete has decided to focus on and what we at the CCE catalog.

So, what is community service? When one volunteers or does community service you are donating your time to an organization/group out of the goodness of your heart. In colleges/universities student groups and organizations are very active in this form of engagement by sponsoring clothing drives, food drives, book drives, etc. Its something that can be done in a group or individually and its an activity that the local agency usually directs. More often than not you are usually helping out the agency by being involved in a program or activity that they are in charge of. My hat goes off to anyone that takes a bit of their time to volunteer anywhere. While talking to our local community partners –especially now in these tough times– they tell me how just volunteering once a week for three hours is a huge help for them. Imagine if a class or a student group managed to volunteer for three hours a week for a semester? It would be incredible. We have cases of classes and groups that do that at USF. St. Pete every semester. I’d like to send them an e-Jersey Shore style fist pump!

When a student takes a class or takes part in an internship usually they are getting credit for it and it integrates academic study with community service in order to make learning more intentional. If that makes any sense at all. In other words: what you learn in the classroom can be directly applied in everyday scenarios in your field placement. Let’s say you’re studying to be an accountant and you take some level 4000 accounting class that has a service learning component to it in which you prepare taxes for underprivileged individuals; that’s combining the best of both worlds and what we try to catalog at the CCE in order to better help other faculty come up with a way to integrate service learning in their curriculum.

Regardless of what type of involvement that a person chooses to do it helps and you deserve a pat on the back for being incredibly selfless and giving! I wish they still made YooHoo pops so that I could give you one!