New Job

I finally got a job and am quickly falling back into the working life. My first day at Dillard's was on Tuesday. I had read and heard many horror stories about working there but tried to stay positive during orientation. Still, as all the new hires introduced themselves I felt like I was in a recession support group. It was obvious that this job was no one's first choice. One man used to own his own company for many years in California. One woman used to work for Micron for over 10 years and was laid off. Another was an interior designer doing model homes for a builder for 15 years, and then the building industry went downhill. Such sad stories. It was humbling. It made me realize how young I truly am and how lucky I am just to be employed.


Over the last 3 days, I've been getting to know all the new hires as we do a bunch of grunt work before we are placed in our departments. We joke that Dillard's hired us just to do some miscellaneous crap work that no one else wants to do and that we'll be terminated at the end of the week. We moved an entire sock wall and set it up to a new directive. There were seriously hundreds of men's socks! Who knew men had so many options! Then today we unloaded Christmas ornaments into a stock room and attempted to match hundreds of shoes flung haphazardly from their HUGE shoe clearance. We have been drowning in footwear! We are anxious for a real jobs to start as sales associates, but I have a feeling we will be begging to return to the sock wall after a couple of weeks. I'm not much for competition, so we'll see how I do on sales. All I know is that I went into the job thinking it was a curse, but am now realizing what a gift it is. I'm surrounded with such diverse coworkers and think I can learn a lot from them and this job. Plus, they gave us free bras today -I'm not kidding, that was a new hire perk! Can't get much better
than that!