Get a haircut and get a real job...

Graduation! Time for freedom and that last summer of laziness before heading off to college and beer. Or...if you are getting married in 6 months and moving across country it's time to find a full time job and start saving your pennies! I always consider my first job out of high school as MY first job. Yes, I had been working with the family and on my own for years by this point but this job I got because of me, not family connections, but me. So that meant something.

Graduated June 2nd, had my wisdom teeth pulled June 5th went to work for Schlotzsky's on June 8th. Started as a crew member in June, was promoted to assistant manager by August and offered my own store by November. Fast food moves fast! I turned down the store because I knew I was moving after Brent got out of Basic Training and I didn't want to put them in a bad spot having to replace a manager that quickly. My area manager was so impressed that I was honest about leaving and didn't want to put them in a difficult spot that he gave me a raise. Nice balance there! I learned a lot by working at Schlotzsky's and I was also able to apply things I had learned at my other jobs.

First off, the restroom cleaning schedule rotated through every shift member, if you had bathroom duty Monday, you knew you wouldn't have it Tuesday. And I kept myself on the list as well. Figured if I wasn't willing to do the job then I shouldn't expect the people that worked for me to do it either. Secondly I asked the folks that worked for me where they wanted to work, counter or back of house? For the most part there were only 5 of us that worked nights and usually there were only 3 of us in the restaurant at one time. So it didn't seem to make sense to force Jackie to work the grill and Shelby the counter if Shelby liked making sandwiches and Jackie liked waiting on customers. I like to think I was a pioneer in Strength Finders Management. (I know! I need to get that blog written some day soon!!)

I also discovered that sometimes you have to change your management style to fit the current situation. I am not in favor of bosses publicly reprimanding employees, I think it's just degrading and unnecessary. For the most part. But I did make an exception for Steve. Steve had been the assistant manager when I first started. He stepped down to go back to school and that's how I was promoted. He went to working day shift on his off days from school. When our manager went on vacation I worked days covering her shift while she was gone. Bigger staff, busier store, more responsibility, but nothing I couldn't handle for the week. Steve was on break from school that week and so had a shift every day. And for the first two days every time I would assign him to a station he would wander away. Supposed to be cutting tomatoes, he was busing tables. Supposed to be assembling sandwiches, he was trying to work the counter. Finally I had had enough.

The beginning of his shift the third day I put him on steamer and I turn around and he is in the stock room getting chips to restock the front counter. I asked him what he was doing back there and he told me that I wasn't paying enough attention to what REALLY needed to be done so he was helping me out by covering for me. Now, normally I would have taken an employee outside (no private office so out back was the "private meeting space") and discussed things with them. But I felt that he had been pushing me all week so I needed to show that I was the boss. I explained to him that Janelle was restocking and if he would have paid attention he would have seen her taking notes on what was needed before beginning the job. Because that is how I told her to do it. And that is what I expected to happen when I told someone to do a job, that they do it. So he could either go work the steamer, and by the way, he was already behind 2 orders, or he could go home, and go for the rest of the week, and he could take it up with Janice when she returned from vacation. He told me he didn't believe me. I walked over to the time-clock, picked up his time-card and went to clock him out. He moved right over to the steamer and got to work. We had a follow up meeting after his shift was over and I wrote him up formally. I never had a problem with him or with any staff member doubting I was serious again.

After Schlotzsky's it was McDonald's for a brief spell. It was the McDonald's on base in Orlando and I had never seen and have not seen since a store so busy. I would get on shift at 4:30 AM. The doors opened at 5 AM and I spent the next 4 hours cranking through hundreds of customers, and just at my register, there were 4 of us ringing up! The lobby was packed, the restaurant was standing room only, it was amazing. We had a lull between 9 and 10 where it was just a little busy, only 2 registers needed, so we would cycle through breaks at that time. Then when breakfast shifted to lunch at 10:30 the second rush of the day would hit and we would be slammed again until my shift ended at 1. I was exhausted. But the shift moved quickly and that was a blessing!

Working at a fast food restaurant on a Navy Base serving people who are far from home for probably the first time in their lives is a good lesson in how important a smile can be to someone. My last week there as I was leaving to move on to the big bad world of retail sales, I was letting people know that I was going. I served the same group of people breakfast and lunch every day, so you get to know your customers at least by face pretty quickly. As I told them good bye and let them know it had been a pleasure serving them quite a few let me know how much they had enjoyed coming in for breakfast and being greeted with what might possibly be their only full on smile of the day. That made me feel great. What a small thing to give to someone, but what a huge difference it can make in attitude.

So on to the world of retail. First it was Beyond/Viva designer electronics. The biggest lessons here were that it's much better to be slamming busy than dead slow. An 8 hour shift can seem like minutes when you are busy but passes like days when you are slow. Designer electronics was a slow business. I took what I had learned at McDonald's about the smile and applied it to the mall even more. The mall was within walking distance of the base and so we had a large contingency of sailors coming in to spend their money. I had something going for me right off the bat,my husband was in the program most of them were heading to, so when they came in to buy their new calculators that they would need for school I could steer them away from the very expensive completely programmable model they all wanted to the lower end graphing but not programmable one that would be allowed in class. Lower commission for me, but why sell them something they weren't going to be able to use? Customers appreciate honesty. And they show their appreciation with loyalty. So when it was payday and they "needed" a cool new radio who did they buy it from? Me. And I sold it to them with a big smile, and tried my hardest to remember everyone's names. Greeting someone with their name and a smile can make their day. Simple. Easy. Effective.

I left B/V when they started to shut down stores and re-arrange staff. The drive to the mall that had room for me wasn't practical. But as luck would have it Beall's (a department store in Florida pronounce it like Bell) was opening a store right down the street from where Brent and I lived. I went to work on the floor then moved into the office while I was there. I also did displays for them. That was great fun! I have explained in an earlier blog why I shifted to the back office so I won't go into that again but I do want to talk about being in displays.

It's a seemingly simple job with a lot of rules! You had to make sure that the mannequins were dressed in the newest items, but not items that were on too big of a sale. If you could, you should really try to keep a continuing color theme through out the store. And NEVER EVER undress a mannequin in view of a customer. I would try and get everything set up during hours we were slow or if I was scheduled for an hour before open or an hour after close I would take care of it then. But sometimes the way shifts worked I would need to do the displays during store hours. This meant hauling a mannequin into the dressing room, changing the clothes, doing all of the pinning and adjusting that is done so the outfit looks perfect and not at all like it's going to look on you when you buy it, accessorize and then re-setup. And you could never as a sales associate take an outfit off of a mannequin to sell to a customer without first taking the mannequin off the floor so no one would be offended by their plastic nudity. And they could also not be dressed in any way shape or form "suggestively". Now how in the world I could make an almost androgynous plastic mannequin suggestive was beyond me. I look at the new model mannequins now that come fully equipped with erect nipples posed with their legs spread and butts in the air (thank you Forever 21) and think somewhere Mr. Beall is rolling over in his grave!

Again, this is really long and we haven't even left Florida, so I am going to wrap up and get back to work tomorrow (ha! Get it? See what I did there??)! But one last thing I learned at Beall's. This is a great line to have in your arsenal as a clothing salesperson..."That line runs really small. I had to buy it two sizes larger than my normal size." This prevents those size 12 ladies from insisting they are no bigger than an 8 and busting out the seams of whatever they are trying on. It's a brilliant line, and I died a little inside the first time someone used it on me! ;-)