when it comes to leaving retail

The purple key ring that was with me the whole time.

In August of the year 2000, I took a walk with my best friend Katie and her two dogs.  We talked about if we had "powers" and what they would be like... mixing X-Men (which had just come out in theaters) with The Craft (because witchcraft was cool to 14-year-olds (and still is cool to 36-year-olds, just sayin')).  Together we came up with scenarios that just sounded like a plain good time, two 20-something's living in a beach house in California and using their abilities for... whatever they used 'em for.  We went back to her house and picked out the names of our characters from a baby-name book, and the rest is history.  That was the day "The Onyxus Chronicles" was born, however much in its infancy.

It was also the day I had decided in the back of my mind that I was going to grow up to be a writer.

Let me tell you some stories.

Now, if you'd asked me on December 26th, 2002, as I stood inside Hollywood Video on Memorial Street in Appleton Wisconsin, and applied for my very first job, what I would be doing in 19 years... I promise you it wasn't going to be retail.  At that moment (delayed a full year because when I was 16 and went in on my birthday they told me the hiring age had JUST changed to 17), I was going to get my first job.  They were hiring me at $5.25 an hour, and I was just over the moon about it.  I got to work at a place I loved, with people I enjoyed, around a product that I adored.  I mean, if there's one thing I loved more than anything else growing up, it was movies.

Movies sparked my imagination.  They showed me realities that could exist if you only tried dreaming of them, and they spoke to me on a level I could not comprehend when I was younger.  Looking back on it, I can see how it was what developed the writer in me, the creator, the person who would eventually go on to write four novels (as of 2022) that spanned an entire universe he had largely made up.  But back then it was cool, and it wasn't the food industry because HELL no was I gonna be slingin' burgers at McDonald's.  

A few months later I picked up a second job at Regal Cinemas, where they paid more ($5.35, paaaaarty) and I got to work around more people my age.  I always get a kick out of that meme that pokes fun at the reality of teenagers working with 40-somethings and making best friends with them at their job.  "Damn, where's James today?  I wonder how his kids are doing."  Regal was faster-paced and a bit more wild, we got up to ridiculous things there that in hindsight, we should have (and would have, had we been caught) absolutely been fired for.  And also for things I'm sure the health department would've shut the place down over.

How did we see no issue in the fact that the big white shovel we used to move ice from the giant machines in the back to buckets for dumping at the soda towers, was stored on the floor?  ON THE FLOOR? 

I digress.

By the time I had graduated from high school in 2004, I was only working at Regal and ready to be done, as "traditional" retail (i.e. American Eagle) was calling my name.  And again... the rest is history.

So much happened in that first year after high school.  I spent the summer at American Eagle, dropping close to 60 pounds of baby fat and coming out of the closet in the process, indulging in gay depravity as much as any reckless 18-year-old would.  By the time fall came around, I shifted from American Eagle (re: was told I was a summer hire and I should fuck off) to Express.  I was part-time, and that was fine.  What wasn't fine was the mountain of credit card debt I had already accumulated, but I wasn't ready to acknowledge that yet and would continue accumulating it over the next year.  I also had my first real adult relationship, one with a lovely guy named Peter that I've sadly lost all communication with.

When that year had wrapped, I dropped out of college and consequently forced myself to drop into full-time retail, owing around $13,000 in credit card debt that I could no longer juggle with a job paying $7.10 an hour.

Full-time Stock Manager at Express, November 2005

I started making friends at this point that would stay with me through the long run.  Some fell by the wayside eventually, like Shannon in this picture, for one reason or another.  But as happens, they often have a way of coming back around.  Like Shannon reaching out through Instagram a few weeks ago to reconnect.  Because it's never too late, right?  I did pick out her wedding song, y'know.

Time seemed to fly once I was full-time there.  You'd hit the holiday season, you would hate your life, and then you would move into the spring season and all would be well.  After a few months, you forgot about retail hell when Christmas approaches, and by the time it rolled around again the next year, you shouldered your way through it and just did the damn job.  Perhaps guilt keeps you there, as it always did with me, because how bad would it look to leave your team high and dry at the busiest time of year?  To leave your COMPANY, because they NEEDED you, right?  And there was always the off-chance your company would do something cool for you.  Like a pizza party!  Or some cheap swag for enduring the holidays!  Like a battered housewife, you stay because you can't imagine it being better elsewhere.  Not my best analogy, but you get it.  And that's retail in a nutshell.

You consistently go through living hell on a daily, if not weekly, if not monthly, if not yearly, basis... and you just deal with it.  Because you're certainly not replaceable, no sir, you're one-of-a-kind.

A mirror selfie at Express, 2010.

Eventually, I was promoted at Express to being the Brand Co-Manager, basically the person in charge of visuals that operated as the store manager's right hand.  It was what I had wanted for so long, and it was great pay ($15.30 an hour, which is just... insanely depressing) that would allow me to buy my very first new car.  At this point in my retail career, or at least by the time of that picture above, I had gone through several failed "relationships", none lasting more than 3 months, and was in the midst of my first big one with Ken, which would fail just before hitting three years. 

I was lost and confused in my life.  I needed the money still, but I had finally paid all the credit card debt off and that was awesome.  But I needed the money... and there was no other option for a job.  I hated clothing by then, I would have a good year with Express and then a total shit one.  The rollercoaster was one that I couldn't get off of and had no idea how to even if I could.  What a mess, right?  The relationship with Ken ended in April of 2011 and I was at an even lower point, hitting rock bottom and having to move back in with my parents because of, you guessed it, money!

A lovely thing happened that winter... I turned 26.  And a few months later in June of 2012, #9 opening a door and #10 an old door closes on my list of 26 Golden Things occurred.  I left Express for Pottery Barn.

My last day at Express.

As had happened when I first worked with Hollywood Video, I was chasing after a passion I had always had but never realized.  My interest in interior design had definitely been with me from a young age, re-arranging my room every other month and just delighting in the fact that I could "reveal" it to my mom was the best thing ever.  This joy was sparked with Pottery Barn, where I could finally learn something useful about LIFE, something that could be applied to a living space and enjoyed.  More so than clothing ever could provide, this was something that you would yearn to live in and breathe in, honing a skill that could induce all sorts of feelings and emotions as a result.  

At least, the first couple of years were like that.  Then I moved to Texas and it all went to shit.

Pottery Barn Kids, December 2015

Moving to Texas was bad in a lot of ways.  Was I following my dream of leaving small-town life and getting to the big city? Sure was!  Was I leaving behind the place where I was perhaps a big fish in a small pond and weirdly everyone seemed to know me, and moving instead to a world where no one was bound to give a crap about me and what I had achieved?  Sure was!

I gained a ton of weight in a remarkably short time.  My second big relationship, the one with Derek that would end at just shy of (wait for it) three years, started to fall apart.  I became disenfranchised with Williams-Sonoma Inc at this point because I got to see the ugly side of it (re: pbKids) and how people were often chewed up and spit out in the machine that it is.  It wasn't all bad all the time, certainly.  And after my brief stint with pbKids, I went to west elm and met some of the most truly lovely, astounding individuals that I still have the pleasure of calling my friends.

After 11 months in Austin, Derek and I moved from Texas to Minneapolis, where I took over my Pottery Barn #733 The Shoppes at Arbor Lakes.

Now don't get me wrong, I met people at Pottery Barn that changed my life.  Courtney, who hired me and is one of my closest friends, is one of them.  Renae, another of my best friends.  Nancy, and Jackie, and Angie and Robin.  The team in Minneapolis in general, both in my store and outside of it... people I will have in my life for hopefully always.  But looking back on the last 6 years at the Maple Grove store, it was almost as if time stopped.  What once was a job that sparked joy, now only brought complacency and an under riding sadness.  Especially after my relationship with Derek ended in mid-2017, I just felt stuck.  I needed the money, now more than ever, because I didn't have the choice to move back in with my parents and start over.  

I had rent to pay, and a car to pay for, and a life that I was so desperately trying to prove something with.  So I trudged on.

My first Williams-Sonoma Inc. GM conference in Scottsdale, AZ, August 2017

I think for a time I was happy at Pottery Barn as a General Manager.  For a time, at least.  There were always issues... there were always problem-child associates and assistant managers that I had to navigate my way around and learn how to deal with.  But there was a brief moment I was happy.  I think it might have been in 2018 when I bought my first house, the Manor, and was able to use all of the interior design knowledge I had accumulated to restore the place.

But hindsight is 20/20, yeah?  And when you take a look back at the blood and sweat and tears you logged in a place, it's hard to let the rose-colored glasses sit so firmly against your eyes any longer.

I was constantly subjected to toxic behavior at Pottery Barn.  Let me reiterate that: constantly.  Daily.  As much as I couldn't admit it at the time, my way of handling it was just a classic avoidance tactic: pretend it doesn't exist.  Even though at your very core you are starting to rot from the inside out, pretend it doesn't bother you and just move forward.  Shitty behaviors from people you are supposed to trust as they stab you in the back and talk negatively about you to everyone in the store are rewarded by your avoidance.  For what purpose they did do this... who the hell knows, it wasn't for their personal gain.  And it wasn't because they didn't like me, I think it was just easier to try and undermine me than constructively talk about changes they wanted me to make.  But it was always there like a cloud over the store, and since I allowed the store and the job to become my life, it was a cloud over me.  So I just led onward, willfully naive on the outside, hating myself on the inside for what I tolerated.

Sometimes those employees would just leave of their own accord, and that was always the best.  It meant I didn't have to hold them accountable.  Other times I did have to confront the situation, something I hate doing very much, and while it yielded the results I needed... I loathed it.  It made my skin crawl.

That's insight into who I am as an individual.  Only a handful of times in my personal life have I ever had to confront a gross situation that I no longer wanted to be a part of, and it never gets easier.  At work it was the same.

After Black Friday 2018.  Wiped TF out.

In late 2019 it was hitting me that I wasn't cut out for the job at Pottery Barn, as my anger and frustrations were working their way into my relationship with Andrew, the third of my "big three" loves.  Something not dramatic at all (truly) had happened in October of 2019 between us, I can't even recall what it really was, but the semi-annual warehouse event at work (a total shit show every time we did it, ask anyone) was happening and I just broke down sobbing and shouting at him one night.  And if you know me, you know that's not really who I am.  

I'm the calm/cool/collected Capricorn that slings witty insults and emotes only enough to get a point across that he's trying to make.  Vulnerable in a controlled environment, only and always.  Like writing things in a blog, you might say.  I don't lose control of myself often.  

Knock three times on the ceiling if you agree with that.

But then Covid happened and I was locked in again at work because what're you gonna do for a new job when the whole world falls apart?  Jack shit, that's what!  So I toughed it out.  And the job got better in 2020, miraculously.  And then in 2021, well, it was the worst year I've ever had in retail.  Ever.  I've never cried so much at a job before in my life.  As 2022 got rolling, it was worse and worse almost on the daily.

Outside of work, my health was continuously falling into the gutter and my relationship with Andrew sputtered out just before hitting (I'm sure you can figure it out) the three-year mark.  My mental health was in complete shambles by the spring of 2022, like... total dog-shit shambles, where I could cry at the drop of a hat.  And only a few people knew this!  Any idea how fun it is keeping that side of yourself locked down?  As I said, I don't like to broadcast the "truth" behind my eyes, but it was there for a couple people.  Therapy and medication and all that crap... and a job that was just taking more and more and more and more.  The future in retail was bleaker than I had ever seen before, and I felt more hopeless than I ever have in my life.  

But I needed the paycheck.

When I told my boss in July that I couldn't do it anymore, I had truly hit my limit.  And I cried on the phone to him and let everything out, and I felt horrible for it as if telling the truth about myself is something to be ashamed of when it comes to a limitation I had finally realized.  A month later after games were played with me, I gave my notice, with the intent of moving onward and upward at Banana Republic.  

I was going to make a lot more money, woo-hoo, and the stress of the daily job was going to go away.

A final retail mirror-selfie, in a jacket from my first holiday with Express in 2004.

But the stress went nowhere.  

My health took an absolute nose-dive, with two big health issues.  One of which is now contained and shouldn't be a problem... the other of which is called Meniere's Disease, an inner-ear condition and autoimmune deficiency that has no cure and is generally just a miserable experience when it flares up.  It is what it is and I invite you to google it if you are curious.

With all of this combined, plus a massive anxiety attack in late September in the bathroom at work that had me thinking I was having a heart attack for good measure, I spoke with my friend and boss, Robin, and decided the time had come for me to just be done.  

I needed to be done.  

As any good friend would be, she understood and she encouraged me to put my health first and to leave.  I felt so stupid and foolish, having forged new relationships at my new job and having to abandon the place so quickly, but they all were so lovely about it as well.  Everyone understood the situation, and in turn, encouraged me to step away and focus on my health.  Retail does have some of the most lovely people working in it, and it is this side of humanity that proves good still exists in the world.

I had been doing Technical Writing, part-time and on the side, for a while.  It was a role Katie had worked so hard with me to attain at her company, all the way since last December, but I finally got the gig late this summer.  Technical Writing could be my fallback as I exited retail, and though the money aspect was still an issue that normally would have stopped me, this time I did not listen to it.  My strategy over the next few months is to decompress the mayhem in my mind, it is to manage my stress levels and get them into a positive space, it is to get my physical health under control, and then it is to ultimately sell my house, the Ranch, and move away from Minnesota.  

All of this while really, uh... while really just being paid to write.

For right now, I think about how it has taken 19 years of my life to figure out how to move toward the passion my 14-year-old self had.  Has... not had.  Writing is, was, has been, and always will be, my passion.  But as I write this and recount my time, there are certain memories that erupt in my mind as fresh as they ever were.  I wanted to share a few of them with you, if you'll indulge me just a bit longer.

I remember standing at the front of Express in the Fox River mall in the late fall of 2004, my white folding table extended open before me.  We youngin's, dressed in our Producer pants and 1MX dress shirts with a tie, would be scheduled like... I dunno, 5pm-11pm, if we were closing.  The store was always such a shit show in the evening and everything was utterly destroyed from shoppers.  When I think of fall meeting winter, of October-December, I often think back on that first holiday season at Express.  Board folding an absolutely destroyed mountain of Merino Wool sweaters in a variety of colors, all of the red marketing we had throughout the store, and the "i wish..." campaign going on with the sexy models advertising it.

I remember my brief stint working at Aldo shoes, for this absolute bitch of a district manager named Paresha.  I was writing my second novel at the time, and when I needed to find a name for the queen of the usha (goblin-like creatures), it was almost too easy to settle on Paresha Drow.

I remember watching Chase Powers clock in and grab his walkie, absentmindedly walking with me to the sales floor and swinging his earpiece around.  And I remember Jennie Gabriel stopping him, holding her clenched fists up to her mouth with this kind-of wince thing, and saying "oh, Chase, please don't swing those!  You could damage them!" And then Chase looked at her like he was going to stab her in the neck as he agreed not to swing them anymore.

I remember meeting my former best friend Mark Plowman, a person I never write about in blogs because some hurts go too deep.  We met at American Eagle, built our best-friend status at Express, and continued it through Pottery Barn where I was the best man at his wedding.  I remember introducing him and his husband to Andrew as we met for dinner on Black Friday in 2019, and then after 15 years of friendship, we never spoke again after that night.  I don't know why... perhaps he does.  Maybe he doesn't know why either and assumes I do.  Regardless, that is what happened.  Now Mark can stay there in my memories of retail, forever... where pieces of my broken heart will remain with him as well.

I remember my first holiday at Pottery Barn.  I didn't have much to do with setting up the decor... though I can't really recall why that was in 2012.  Everything was so jerry-rigged, the trees were prelit but all those lights were burnt out so Courtney and the team had wrapped additional strands of lights around them.  I will say that in later years when they sent all new trees to all stores, they were super shitty compared to those original trees whether the lights worked or not. Everything smelled so good in the store and was so bright and cheerful and happy.  I was so happy to be there and to be part of it, and I felt really special.

I remember my first real closing shift at Pottery Barn in Appleton and the front window inexplicably exploding.  I remember security guards not showing up at Pottery Barn in Maple Grove for overnight shifts when the store needed to be repainted and me having to stay til 2 am.  I remember crying in the office after 7 consecutive phone calls in 2021 with a horrifically mean woman and her daughter, furious that I couldn't (or wouldn't, according to them) fly to Vietnam to oversee the construction and subsequent shipping of their home office furniture that had initially arrived damaged.

I remember being happy so many times.  

I remember being unbearably sad and feeling hopeless so many others.  

I remember relying on my staff at Arbor Lakes to help me limp through the two greatest heartbreaks I've ever known.  

I remember the ease of doing a job I had done so well, every day, for 10 years... and I remember the pure elation at walking away from it this summer.

I was standing at work in Banana Republic the other week, on the men's side, folding stacks of Merino Wool sweaters, when I got to thinking.  It's funny how everything eventually comes full circle, isn't it?  How in October of 2004 I was doing this exact same thing and heading into my very first retail holiday season.  And how this time, in October of 2022, I was escaping just before it could begin.

Sean Parker, writer

And then there's me as I am, now... today... finally coming to terms with the fact that my only source of income is from writing.  That I, Sean S. Parker, once a self-proclaimed author, am now both a genuine author and writer.  What a wild ride it was to get here.  To see a dream realized from your childhood and to realize your life is about to change so incredibly much.

I think about the people I met along the way, and I always think about some of the ones that I lost.  I think about Mackenzie from Express, who took her own life in 2012 at the age of 20.  She was the first person I had ever known on a personal level to commit suicide, and when I think of her it makes me so sad.  I think of my old assistant Megan, a true wonder and delight that brought so much joy to my time at Pottery Barn, and who had a box of two dining chairs fall on her head the weekend of Thanksgiving in 2018.  I was off that day, cutting down my Christmas tree.  When she called me in the middle of the night, slurring her speech and saying she was going to the ER, I had no idea it had even happened, and certainly no idea Megan would be left permanently disabled from it.  And I miss her.

You go through things in retail.  

You go through trauma, occasionally much more than whatever living hell a customer can put you through.  These are the traumas that remain, the ones you never forget or let go of.  Partly because you can't and partly because you don't want to.  You do also go through great joys, of course.  The weddings of coworkers, meeting new friends that eventually become your family.  You learn lessons, many of them are really hard ones... but you learn them just the same.  And in the end, you're better for it.  

Maybe you have some permanent scars on your mental health from it, and maybe a few of them are scars that will never fully heal.  Maybe you also have some true joys in your heart that will ride with you until your journey in life is over, and that part is also true.  

I loved retail and I hated retail in the same breath, but I also would not be who I am today without it.  The sweet can never be as sweet without the sour.

8th Grade Farewell with Katie, June 2000

Right now I look back on that 14-year-old kid, sitting with a girl he'd known for less than two years, and not knowing how much she would change his life.  Not knowing how two months after this picture, he would start writing a short story called "The Originality," precursor to four volumes of "The Onyxus Chronicles," because of her influence.  I also look at the two of them and chuckle that now, a full 24 years later, she would be the best friend he ever had and one that showed him so many new opportunities whenever she decided, inadvertently or not, that he was ready for them.  I am indebted to Katie, my Scoop, forever. And that's just another fact you can all now know about me.

So, it's forward that I go.  With no corporate giant at my back, or riding on my shoulders, as it were... but instead with a keyboard beneath my fingers and a lifetime of experiences ahead of me.  I will never regret my time spent in retail... it taught me who I should be, and definitely who I shouldn't be.  

Right now I'm more excited to find out who I will be.

Ciao for now (c: