Mom was kinda-sorta (re: not at all) pressuring me to get a job as I approached 16, and I was dead set on getting one at the video store. Most of my friends who already had jobs were working at McDonalds or something similar, and though @caitcd was working at a movie theater, she and I weren't exactly friends yet so I didn't think of it. I never wanted to be in the food industry so I felt that the video store, something we had frequented every Friday night for as far back as I can remember, was right up my alley. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone reading this, because I'm still quite the movie fanatic and can more than hold my own in any sort of trivia game.
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| Hollywood Video on Memorial. It was in the process of being converted to a thrift store in this picture. |
Unfortunately on the day I turned 16, I went in to apply and was told corporate had changed the age requirement from 16 to 17. Well... fuck. I wasn't really driving a car very much on my own at that point, so it wasn't really a big deal that I wouldn't have a paycheck coming in. I still got an allowance for doing chores around the house (taking the garbage out, mowing the lawn twice a week in the summer, etc). So a year later I went back in to apply. The employees all knew who I was, they knew who my mom was, so it was just this little joke of "come on in when you're old enough and we'll be good to go." So I did. And I got hired.
After doing my orientation (sexual harassment video, loss prevention video, blah blah blah) in Green Bay, I then went on to work for Hollywood Video on Memorial for $5.20 an hour. The job was pretty simple, we mostly had VHS movies still so there was a lot of rewinding and the alphabetizing. After the company went under, one of the many casualties that came with Netflix, that location became a thrift store. But it'll always be my first job, and it was a good one. A few months after getting it, I also started working at Regal Cinemas and I kept up both jobs for about a year and a half making, wait for it... $5.35 an hour! Stop the press! Gotta say, I loved it. Free movies to rent and see in the theater, free drinks and food at the theater (I was overweight so free nachos was a good thing I guess), but on top of it I knew they liked me.
I was honest and dependable, always the dutiful employee that went above and beyond what I was supposed to be doing because I just felt it wasn't an option. You're working... so do the job you were hired for. Even if you're getting paid peanuts, do the job. Someone will notice.
This is actually good advice that I grasped from an early age. Put your head down, do your work, be polite, maybe suck up a little, and someone will notice. Eventually.
When high school ended, so did those two jobs. I suppose I was ready to move on to something more "adult," which is stupid because that meant leaving what were actually very easy jobs and getting into the world of clothing retail, a very different animal. I spent the summer working for American Eagle as a sales associate, never leaving the fitting rooms once. No cashier training, just folding clothes and straightening at night and feeling like I was cool. I found out a few months later that I was considered just summer help, which in hindsight is ridiculous and something I probably could have fought. In reality, I did call in sick a few times a month because I was 18 and excited to be "out" and everything that came with it. This pushed me to go and apply for a new job at Express. Which I got.
Now you should know, I ended up staying with Express for 8 years, or just a couple months shy of 8 years, actually. There were a couple additional and/or different jobs peppered in there, including a brief stint at a call center and then Aldo for five months with a horrendous company. I started as a sales associate on the sales floor, really not that special in my role but dependable. Made my way to being the Stockroom Manager after a year, did that for another year, then stepped up to an Assistant Brand Manager and eventually a Brand Co-Manager, which meant I was in charge of visuals and floorsets for the store. I loved the visual aspect of retail; changing out displays, setting the windows, dressing the mannequins, etc. It gave me the opportunity to be creative, albeit with several constraints set by corporate, but regardless.
Express was a company that I had several highs and lows with. I'd have a great year, then a rough year, wondering constantly if what I was doing was even what I wanted to be doing. Some of that would have to deal with what was going on my my personal life of course. It wasn't until Steve came along as my store manager in year 5 or 6, and that's when I started to become more than just an associate with keys and actually became a manager. Steve taught me how to coach and develop a staff, to hold people accountable, and to ultimately rise above the crowd as a bonafide leader. When I was promoted into my final position (Brand Co (basically second in command)) I had to leave Steve and my team in Appleton behind to work in Green Bay. It was something I'd never wanted to do but I accepted because of the promotion and needed to get my leg up.
I understand why the powers that be moved me, though I still think the excuse was kind of bullshit. Green Bay already had a manager in that role, and they wanted her in the Appleton store because it was a higher volume and felt she earned the opportunity/challenge. However neither of us wanted to leave our respective stores, and it ultimately meant we would both quit the company within weeks of each other a year later. Sometimes that's how it goes though and hindsight is always 20/20.
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| So long, suckas. |
That final year with Express was a steady spiral downward through 2011 and into 2012. I was newly single, questioning my life and my choices, working somewhere I didn't want to work and living with my parents again. The store wasn't performing, we were always getting yelled at, and I was making absolutely dick for money. Sorry for the ugly word, but really. When my birthday came along at the end of the year, it brought with it the idea behind "26 Golden Things" and the seed was planted that I would look for a new job. The thought alone of leaving Express (and everything I knew so well) was terrifying, and it was something I felt the least likely to come true in my list of things I wanted to accomplish. I never even applied for a new job, I lucked out with one. Mid April rolled in and I got a phone call from Courtney at Pottery Barn. Just over a month later and I was trottin' out of Express at Bay Park with a bowl of Pigs-in-a-blanket and a few balloons, never to look back again.
Being pushed is a key thing here, folks. I think we get bored when we know what to expect. Where's the excitement in the same day to day trials and tribulations? It's nowhere, that's where. Here was a place where I had an enormous amount of new product to learn about, and what was more, the product had stories behind it! Like that Toscana dining table? It was inspired by a 19th-century Northern Italian work table with an X-shaped base and keyed through tenons. Like those acorn vase fillers? The acorns themselves may be fake but the caps are real!
I'm a guy who finds joy in the details (you may not know this, but I have a book series loaded with details) so to work for a place full of these little factoids, count me right in. When it came to being creative? You had even MORE say with the floorsets because they needed to be adapted to your store. There was so much more thought and creativity and excitement that went into it, changing the entire look of the store every three months with entirely new product and not just shuffling around mostly the same stuff with a few new shirts and washes of denim thrown in. That was amazing to me, and it still is. There's an energy through the store when one season ends and another begins, and I'm so happy it hasn't gone away.
I also had a great team of people to work with, chief among them being Courtney. If Steve started me on the path to how to lead, Courtney put the polishing touches on it. She taught me calm under pressure, how to diffuse situations, and how to just be so annoyingly nice that it enables you to get away with everything. Usually. We're a customer service based company, and she showed me what great customer service looks like from beginning to end. I'll never lose that.
Sitting on another conference call with Courtney, secretly taping.
Upset about the itchy mosquito bite on my cheek.
Upset about the itchy mosquito bite on my cheek.
A couple years in Courtney had a baby and I was made the Acting General Manager for the first time, filling the role for a little over three months before she came back to work. I got a taste for running the ship myself through the holiday season, and to be perfectly honest, I hated it. Everything that could go wrong (I thought) went absolutely and unequivocally wrong. Disastrous. Our numbers were "fine," but I wasn't, having gotten sick in early December and staying sick through January. By the time she came back at the very end of February, I was more than happy to chuck the keys back at her and slide into the ACM role I had become so comfortable in.
Six months later I moved to Texas.
Now, the move was supposed to result in me transferring to west elm, a sister store under the Williams-Sonoma umbrella. I'd be taking a step down in the corporate ladder, becoming the Sales and Service Assistant (ASM), but my pay would stay the same so I didn't really care. I was going to a store that was almost quadruple the volume and I was going to get to add that to my resume. Only it didn't shake out quite that way, and two weeks before moving the job fell through. The replacement? I would be the ACM for PBKids because they were going through a weird transition. Now, I've written about that particular misery before so I won't get too into it, but suffice to say I became the Acting GM again after a couple weeks, for my second consecutive holiday season, and ran the ship again.
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| Mid November, about a week before I absolutely lost my shit, threw my hands up and threatened to leave. |
If I thought things had gone awry in Appleton, they sure as shit detonated at PBKids. Here was a store that broke me down, made me hate myself, my relationship, the city of Austin, made me gain weight, and ultimately put me in a depression I was not able to recover from for a year. And I'm not being melodramatic, because that's how it went. It wasn't the company, mind you, but that particular location and all of the crap that went with it. My first Acting GM gig was full of things going wrong... my second gig was full of everything else that could go wrong.
But I couldn't quit.
I still had that mentality from when I first started working at 17, do you remember what it was? You're here to do a job. You've got to suck it up, you've got to show up, and you've got to sometimes just keep your fucking head down and do what needs to be done. Yes it was exhausting. Yes it was awful, and depressing, and annoying, and infuriating. Sometimes it was just an absolute gut punch that no matter what I did, no matter how nice I was or how empathetic or understanding I tried to be, most of that staff hated me. I don't say this for many things in my life, but if I had the choice to go back in time, I would not do it all over again. I'd have found another job pronto and let that be it, because this one destroyed me. But dear reader, y'know what? Things would have ended differently then. And for as much as I wouldn't want to do it all over again... I'm not so sure I would have wanted it to end differently.
I did the gig for four months before mercifully being able to go to west elm in the role I was supposed to have from the beginning. They sort of... nursed me back to life, I suppose. My wonderful boss Jesse gave me a week off between jobs, and when I finally did come on board I was greeted with open arms. "What do you need from us? What can we do for you? What would make you feel successful in your role? What ideas do you have to increase productivity? What has worked for you in the past? What takeaways do you have from your other jobs?" He got me to think about the how's and why's behind my job, how to push the envelope and create my own business. We live in a world where brick and mortar stores are in danger of being shuttered by the likes of online retail, and he showed me how to drive that traffic into the store.
I bitch a lot about Austin and what the experience was, but it really wasn't that bad. Hindsight shows me I didn't give it as much of a chance as I should have, but as with other things in my life before it, it was circumstantial. While west elm ultimately was not the best fit for me, it reinvigorated me in my job and helped me to uncover what I loved about it in the first place. I was able to see things from a different perspective and I was able to appreciate them so much more because of it. That is not something I would undo. And when it comes to the friends I made at west elm? I still talk to many of them and I still miss them so very much. They made things bearable and work fun again, and I'll forever be appreciative of that.
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| At west elm, and starting to feel like myself again. |
That May I had a mental breakdown, quite literally, and decided I needed to move back to the north. I wanted to be back in a cold climate, at a brand I loved, near my family, and just... away. Away from Austin. Not the people, but the place. I needed to surround myself with familiarity again and hardest of all, I needed to give up on my dream that Austin was the place to be and that ultimately, it really wasn't. And that's okay.
After speaking several times with the new District Manager, Damien, I moved to Minneapolis and started back at Pottery Barn as the ACM once more. This of course coming with the intent of being the Acting GM for a third consecutive holiday season to cover another maternity leave. I think my mindset going into it this time was, in a word, different. I was calm and cool and collected, much like Courtney had taught me and that Jesse had strengthened. People kept trying to spook me about what was to come and what could possibly happen, but when it came down to it, I knew I could do it again with no sweat.
That's the funny thing about experiencing awful things; they prepare you for the future.
We know by now I'm a big fan of learning lessons, and that I'll search for meaning in anything I do with this being no exception. Visual Manager quits on you a week before physical inventory? Plan for it! Associates quit on you in the middle of holiday? Be ready to hire more! Don't freak out, don't get down on yourself, drink lots of water, and try to disconnect when you can. Reach out to your peers, vent to your peers, and don't be afraid to ask for help. It's okay to fail, it's okay to slip, it's okay to make a mistake. It's okay to not be perfect.
I have a hard time with that last statement, and it's something I'm still working toward... perfecting? I don't like to fail. I hate to fail, actually. Not because I'm overly competitive and not because I don't want to be embarrassed, but because I don't want to be disappointed. I like to only take calculated risks, I don't like to get my hopes up, and again, I don't like to be disappointed in myself. But it happens and that's part of my development.
So ANYWAY, I made it through the third Acting GM gig with flying colors. FLYING colors! And I came out the other side of the holiday season bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to take on the damn world! I relinquished the Acting GM title very briefly in April for three weeks, and then took it on again at the end of the month. Now I'm not gonna lie here... the ensuing few months weren't great.
May was a horrible month, and I'm still trying to bounce back from it (on a work level). My job itself was kind of in a weird limbo and could go away at any moment, dropping me back into the ACM role.
But, y'know... head down, keep working.
June was better. June was actually really good, and I started feeling better about my performance despite still wondering about my job.
Head down, keep working.
And then Derek did what he did. My personal life, still somewhat fragile and not what it used to be, took a lovely nosedive right into the porcelain peehole. It's hard for me to exaggerate, willingly or not, but that was about as bad as it could have been. And it sucked. It sucked, and it hurt, and it still hurts and it still sucks.
But again, because it's what I know how to do... head down, keep working.
A couple days ago I got a phone call from Damien. I was sitting on the gift wrap station in the stockroom at Pottery Barn, and I immediately started to cry after he said it. Because I needed a win. After everything, work and personal, I needed something that would make it all feel like it hadn't just been a waste of time. A waste of life.
"You're the General Manager of Arbor Lakes now."
Just like that.
Quite suddenly every negative thought... every sour image... every doubt... it washes away. Suddenly you realize it was all worth it. The hours that followed proved this true, as my frustrations and angers that had to do with work turned into the writing on a dry-erase board, vanishing beneath the felt eraser. It's my store now... it's my store. There is no contract saying I have to give it back again; there is no waiting for it to be over, to lose the pay and step back down to ACM. It's mine. Officially. Unequivocally. Irrefutably. Mine.
I look back on the last 14 years of jobs and see how far I've come. That kid in the denim button-down shirt at Hollywood Video afraid of telling people they had late fee's on their accounts for past due movies. That kid at Regal Cinemas in the maroon polo shirt, afraid to tell people to stop talking during the movie. The uncomfortable 18 year old sucking his gut in to the point that it hurt, not eating anything for a day or two at a time because he was so desperate to lose weight and fit in at American Eagle. I look back on the experiences and the lessons; why you don't date someone you work with and why you don't give your boss the finger when they can very easily turn around and catch you doing it. I see why you always tell the truth at work, even if it sucks. Why you stand up for yourself. Why you don't back down to a bully (nasty-evil-bitch-troll-from-hell) store manager who you will eventually get fired if you just persevere and beat her at her own game.
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| When I posted this last year, Tina said she felt like it was a hero suiting up. |
When posed with the question "Where do you see yourself in five years?" I have never been the kind of person to exclaim "RUNNING THE COMPANY AS THE CEO!" I've always been a realist, choosing instead to only focus on the next level. As an associate it was to become a manager, then to become the Co-Manager. As the ACM, it was to be the GM. Now? I don't really know. Maybe after I wear the hat for a few months... or not the hat, but maybe a peacoat, as my head is too big for a hat... but after that maybe I'll know what I want to do next. For the time being I'm just going to enjoy it.
Because I've worked really hard. I've struggled, I've fallen, I've messed up, and ultimately I've succeeded. I don't accept this responsibility lightly. I am grateful and overjoyed and ecstatic to be able to prove myself now more than ever before. Because I earned it. I deserve it. And I'm gonna own it.
Like Muse says: "When hope and love has been lost, and you fall to the ground... you must find a way. When the darkness descends, and you're told it's the end, you must find a way. Dig down."
I know I'm not done digging, but at least I'm starting to see some reward for the effort. Ciao for now (c;
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