Adulthood: Attempt 1 of 1
I am a bit of a perfectionist. I love having plans and knowing what I will do next. Being a college senior in May without a job lined up after graduation was not my idea of good. I was nervous to move away from my hometown/college town. I was nervous to learn a new a city. I was nervous to make new friends. With very little planned and very few leads, I packed up my college apartment and home bedroom and moved to Des Moines. I had a couple job interviews after I arrived there but nothing quite went my way. I was either a company's second choice or never got an interview for jobs I thought were a perfect match to my skills and career aspirations.
Fast forward a couple weeks and I do not have a job (still) but I have an 8 week old puppy. She was fun (still is, and cute as can be!) but even she did not give me a ton of purpose to my day. She needed to be constantly monitored or would get into trouble and potty training could be a struggle some days. While laying around, taking naps, drinking coffee, and playing with my dog was fun I needed more in life–in more ways than one. I needed an income as my meager bank account from college was starting to dwindle and no funds were coming in. I set out to find some part time job to give me a greater sense of purpose and income. After a scanning a few job boards, I applied for several retail jobs (introverted Bre was regretting this decision instantly but she did not have a lot of options at that point). I ended up applying and being hired at Von Maur.
For those who are not familiar with Von Maur it is a department store in malls mainly around the Midwest though it is expanding into the southern United States. It is suuuuuper customer service based and prides itself on high level customer interaction and satisfaction. Being courteous and pleasant at all times was a must. While I am not a Chatty-Cathy by any means I did enjoy my (short) time there, meeting a lot of cool women. Being patient and polite are two of my strong suits so I was not completely out of my league.
The two most important things I learned working retail were:
1. Some people are meant to work in retail. They love people and love to sell.
2. I am not one of those people.
I was pretty decent at selling and pretty good at interacting with people. (Mostly I was starved for human interaction after spending all day with my dog.) I grew up in a small town knowing what seemed like everyone and everyone knew me from something. It was difficult to come to Von Maur and know absolutely no one that walked through my department. I made due and learned how to talk to just about anyone. However I did learn a few key life lessons working there:
1. People are as real as they want.
2. Women love compliments.
To address point 1, it is very obvious when people are faking their personality to sell. Keep that in mind beyond retail. I worked with people who could turn on and off a caring personality in less than two seconds. I could not fathom how polite they were to a customer and how much crap they could say after they left. Their was a frown and glare as soon as the customer left the cash register. Sure, I had my fair share of grumbles after customers who were a challenge but never as much as a few girls I worked with. Be kind. Be gracious. Be humble.
To address point 2, I worked in the petite women's department (so can't say much for men's clothing) and women love hearing they look good in something. There are a lot of body-conscious women out there–I met dozens each day. People should compliment each other more. I have made it a goal at my current job to compliment one person per day. Tell someone you like their sweater. Ask where they got their earrings. Say how cool a shirt and sock combination is. It is not difficult and helps lift people's moods. I cannot begin to tell you how many people have asked me if their butt looked ok in a pair of pants or if a sweater fit right. "Does this jacket make my stomach look flatter? If I suck it in the whole day I think it could look pretty good!" Do you like how you feel in it? If you don't feel confident in it, don't buy. This is probably not the best sales technique to use but it helped women be honest with themselves and only walk away with things that felt right to them. PS- I did have pretty good sales numbers for someone who wasn't pushy about buying clothing. I even talked some women out of very expensive clothing (got a few warnings from my manager about that but she left 2 weeks after I started) but those customers valued my honesty and praise and asked for me the next time they came into the store.
While I was pretty good at selling clothes I knew that was not what I wanted to do with my life. Results still pending what the answer is to that question but I can certainly tell you the next step I took. After working at Von Maur for a few months (part time, random hours was not my favorite either) I eventually found a full time job at Wells Fargo working in loan servicing (I sit in a cubicle for 9 hours a day on a computer). The very basic version of what my job entails is fee reconciliation. Mortgages, deeds, affidavits, powers of attorneys, and beyond are recorded at the county/town/parish/municipality in every state as a public record whenever some takes out a home loan or refinances their current one. My job is to track down a copy with a recording stamp and type up how much it costs. The entire loan is passed along to another team at work that makes sure people are refunded money if they paid too much money up front for recording.
Do I love this job? Eh. Do I want to do this job forever? Not particularly. Is it better than what I was doing at Von Maur? Perhaps. That's where I am after my first summer in the adult world. Slowly I'm figuring out what I want out of a career an developing some skills along the way. I try to see each day as a new task that needs to help me grow. I only have this one chance at any given day. Before I know it I will be middle aged and I do not want to look back at 2016, my first steps in the adult world, with regret.
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