Adventures In Real Life ("Hard Conversations")
This week I've had my first taste of the Real World as a Grown-Up.
It kind of sucks. I've been so stressed out about work and I can't fully figure out why - I think it has something to do with the fact that this is the closest I've come to Real Issues in my life. People are losing their jobs. My store isn't making as much money as the company wants it to. I don't have enough hours to schedule the people I have. They count on me to get money for their lives and the stress of not being able to deliver is almost as bad as the stress of my (hopefully) irrational fear that I will be fired.
Yesterday it occurred to me that I have no marketable skills. I've held 3 jobs in my entire life (4 if you count my half-assed work study doing HTML coding for a semester in college which I don't): I was a receptionist for the township, I worked at a movie theater and I worked at the bookstore. Granted, in the 13 months I was at the movie theater, I worked my way from popcorn slinger to salaried concession manager and I've been at the same bookstore for just over 5 years now (Feb. 2nd).
The bookstore is really my crowning achievement since I worked my way up from part-timer to Children's Lead (where I whipped the department into shape form an under performing redheaded stepchild to a thriving 13% of sales) and then over to Mags (for 13 months, ironically enough) before returning to Kids and then getting promoted again. With the exception of one full-time bookseller who's been with the store since it opened in the summer of '99, I have been at the store longer than anyone including our store manager, though she and the other Assistant Store Manager have much more experience with the company than I do. After being in charge of the Children's Department, I am now Assistant Store Manager and in charge of scheduling people as well as handling the daily crises that arise - apparently I have an affinity for boring and entirely counter-productive wastes of time in court as well as fires, having dealt with 4 in the past 2 years.
But, really: that's it. I have no college degree to my name and my only bankable skills are focused in a retail environment. A retail environment dealing with an industry that, by most accounts, is dying. CD sales are down across the board - DVD isn't much better. Sure, people predict that like the Great Depression, the entertainment industry will spike while the rest of the economy goes down the crapper since people are looking for an escape. But they're not looking to pay what my store charges for a DVD, I can tell you that much. Books are going digital along with everything else and brick and mortar stores might not be around forever.
I am twenty-six years old. According to the government, I am 33 and a half years away from an age when I can even think about retiring. If the bottom drops out of the book buying industry, I will be just another person flooding the job market. Another person just like the 30 who submitted applications to my store in the past 2 weeks. Sure, a lost of them were our usual shit applications (no work experience, can work 5-10 Mondays Thursdays and Fridays and 12-9 on Sunday, want $10 an hour) but more and more of the applications become filled with that quiet desperation. "List the hours you can work: Any Time" "Date you are available: Immediately" "Salary: Negotiable" People with years of retail experience - some of it in the same or a comparable field.
People that I would love to hire but can't because I don't have the payroll available to train them, nor the hours to give them if they managed to get hired.
I'm supposed to have "hard conversations" with employees who have bad availability. People who can only give me a few days a week because they're spending the other few days working in order to pay for things like rent and food. I have to look at these people and tell them that they should somehow prioritize their crappy retail job over everything else. And sadly? They will. Because we're at a time when people are lucky to even have their crappy retail job.
I can't go into specifics and numbers but I've seen my store's sales plan and projected payroll and the dreaded Sales-Per-Hour number that we have to make. It's all equally ridiculous. The beginning of the year may be slightly more tolerable, but at the end of the day, my store is still expected to make more money this year than it did last year. I'm in a position now where I am not even given enough hours to run the store on a day-to-day basis, much less get all the assigned projects done. After finally getting ourselves to a good place where we have a system of on-call shifts designed to help us if (and when) someone calls out, I find myself knowing that people are calling out for a shift, knowing that I have someone who can cover the shift and not being able to fill the shift because we had a slow morning and I can't justify spending the payroll.
I have had a headache for three days. It started when my hot water heater died ($4,000 in repairs) and I had a review with the district manager coming up the next morning and needed to wash my hair with freezing cold water. I knelt on the floor of our recently repaired bathroom (another $4,000 spent just last month) and poured ice cold water over my hair, scrubbing it out with one red and trembling hand that was so cold it burned. I watched the water run soapy and felt the cold stabbing into my skull and it hurt so bad that I was crying. Yelling. Mournful sounds were coming out of me - the sounds you make when something dies. My eyes stung and my hand burned and I wept and shook over the edge of the tub, crying out because it hurt, crying out because even though it hurt, I wanted it to freeze my brain completely.
I didn't want to think about how we were going to pay the utilities and the taxes in order to keep the house that brought me up - that brought up my mother. I didn't want to worry that at the meeting with my district manager, he would look at how many hours I had overspent (hours that I knew I had given to hard-working and deserving people who were still asking me - begging me - for more) and he would decide to have a "hard conversation" with me. That I would find myself on the street with my zero marketable skills and I would have to start filling out job applications. Scouring the non-existent want-ads.
I am twenty-six years old. In the past 3 days I have given serious and not-so-serious thought to several options that include writing, renting out my unused womb to a childless couple and suicide. I know this will pass. I know this is only temporary - the economy will get better and we will get through this and things will return to the way they were and everything will be back on track. I know that this experience will teach me things about life that I never learned by dropping out of school and running home to mom - by living for years (and still living, to some extent) on charity and pity.
I just wish we were there now.
And even though money is tight and the thought of the debt that my mother and I are in due to home repairs and things of that nature astonishes and chills me? I went shopping last night. I bought a book and 2 movies and spent $30 in my store. Part of it was due to retail therapy - I am in a dark place and I feel bad and when I feel bad I have 2 options: Mess With My Hair or Buy Something. Well I cut about 6 inches off my hair two nights ago and it didn't help, so I picked up some things at the store and paid cash to avoid eventual interest rates. And on the way home, I got McDonald's from the drive through because I had skipped lunch and needed to clear some things off my TiVo (the contract of which I will not be renewing when it comes due this summer).
Later today, my mother and I are going to be turning in the cable box - not because we're giving up TV or trying to cut back, but because we've upgraded ourselves to digital cable. And not renewing TiVo is just because we've signed up for a DVR with the cable company instead. And after we do that, we're going to Best Buy and we're going to price HDTVs - a sale starts tomorrow and she's going to pick one up for about $400. And when I get my income tax money back? I'm going to get a PS3 and some Blu-Ray - and I'll probably pay a little more and get them through Gamestop (which my company owns) and my store rather than bargain hunt.
Because I know that my store isn't the only one with a daunting sales plan. I am not alone in this - we are a nation unified by debt and unrealistic expectations. And right now we are a nation of people who are tightening their belts and being frugal - and this is reality, this is necessary. But if people stop buying things like books (which, let's face it, are a luxury item) then my store stops making money. If my store stops making money, it has to cut corners. Maybe we'll start keeping shorter hours at the store. Maybe we'll have to close our music department. Maybe when I'm doing the April schedule, I have to cut so many corners that I have to have 3 "hard conversations" with people.
So even if it hurts me - even if it's just a drop in the proverbial bucket - I'm going to keep spending money. I'm going to buy things not just to make myself feel better but to maybe do what I can to help people make their own sales plans. It's not much and it may not make a difference - but I think that if enough people think like I do, maybe it will make a difference. Maybe it will help. So I don't know about you guys, but I plan to keep spending money in my store and at Gamestop and Best Buy and McDonald's.
And I'm going to supersize.
It kind of sucks. I've been so stressed out about work and I can't fully figure out why - I think it has something to do with the fact that this is the closest I've come to Real Issues in my life. People are losing their jobs. My store isn't making as much money as the company wants it to. I don't have enough hours to schedule the people I have. They count on me to get money for their lives and the stress of not being able to deliver is almost as bad as the stress of my (hopefully) irrational fear that I will be fired.
Yesterday it occurred to me that I have no marketable skills. I've held 3 jobs in my entire life (4 if you count my half-assed work study doing HTML coding for a semester in college which I don't): I was a receptionist for the township, I worked at a movie theater and I worked at the bookstore. Granted, in the 13 months I was at the movie theater, I worked my way from popcorn slinger to salaried concession manager and I've been at the same bookstore for just over 5 years now (Feb. 2nd).
The bookstore is really my crowning achievement since I worked my way up from part-timer to Children's Lead (where I whipped the department into shape form an under performing redheaded stepchild to a thriving 13% of sales) and then over to Mags (for 13 months, ironically enough) before returning to Kids and then getting promoted again. With the exception of one full-time bookseller who's been with the store since it opened in the summer of '99, I have been at the store longer than anyone including our store manager, though she and the other Assistant Store Manager have much more experience with the company than I do. After being in charge of the Children's Department, I am now Assistant Store Manager and in charge of scheduling people as well as handling the daily crises that arise - apparently I have an affinity for boring and entirely counter-productive wastes of time in court as well as fires, having dealt with 4 in the past 2 years.
But, really: that's it. I have no college degree to my name and my only bankable skills are focused in a retail environment. A retail environment dealing with an industry that, by most accounts, is dying. CD sales are down across the board - DVD isn't much better. Sure, people predict that like the Great Depression, the entertainment industry will spike while the rest of the economy goes down the crapper since people are looking for an escape. But they're not looking to pay what my store charges for a DVD, I can tell you that much. Books are going digital along with everything else and brick and mortar stores might not be around forever.
I am twenty-six years old. According to the government, I am 33 and a half years away from an age when I can even think about retiring. If the bottom drops out of the book buying industry, I will be just another person flooding the job market. Another person just like the 30 who submitted applications to my store in the past 2 weeks. Sure, a lost of them were our usual shit applications (no work experience, can work 5-10 Mondays Thursdays and Fridays and 12-9 on Sunday, want $10 an hour) but more and more of the applications become filled with that quiet desperation. "List the hours you can work: Any Time" "Date you are available: Immediately" "Salary: Negotiable" People with years of retail experience - some of it in the same or a comparable field.
People that I would love to hire but can't because I don't have the payroll available to train them, nor the hours to give them if they managed to get hired.
I'm supposed to have "hard conversations" with employees who have bad availability. People who can only give me a few days a week because they're spending the other few days working in order to pay for things like rent and food. I have to look at these people and tell them that they should somehow prioritize their crappy retail job over everything else. And sadly? They will. Because we're at a time when people are lucky to even have their crappy retail job.
I can't go into specifics and numbers but I've seen my store's sales plan and projected payroll and the dreaded Sales-Per-Hour number that we have to make. It's all equally ridiculous. The beginning of the year may be slightly more tolerable, but at the end of the day, my store is still expected to make more money this year than it did last year. I'm in a position now where I am not even given enough hours to run the store on a day-to-day basis, much less get all the assigned projects done. After finally getting ourselves to a good place where we have a system of on-call shifts designed to help us if (and when) someone calls out, I find myself knowing that people are calling out for a shift, knowing that I have someone who can cover the shift and not being able to fill the shift because we had a slow morning and I can't justify spending the payroll.
I have had a headache for three days. It started when my hot water heater died ($4,000 in repairs) and I had a review with the district manager coming up the next morning and needed to wash my hair with freezing cold water. I knelt on the floor of our recently repaired bathroom (another $4,000 spent just last month) and poured ice cold water over my hair, scrubbing it out with one red and trembling hand that was so cold it burned. I watched the water run soapy and felt the cold stabbing into my skull and it hurt so bad that I was crying. Yelling. Mournful sounds were coming out of me - the sounds you make when something dies. My eyes stung and my hand burned and I wept and shook over the edge of the tub, crying out because it hurt, crying out because even though it hurt, I wanted it to freeze my brain completely.
I didn't want to think about how we were going to pay the utilities and the taxes in order to keep the house that brought me up - that brought up my mother. I didn't want to worry that at the meeting with my district manager, he would look at how many hours I had overspent (hours that I knew I had given to hard-working and deserving people who were still asking me - begging me - for more) and he would decide to have a "hard conversation" with me. That I would find myself on the street with my zero marketable skills and I would have to start filling out job applications. Scouring the non-existent want-ads.
I am twenty-six years old. In the past 3 days I have given serious and not-so-serious thought to several options that include writing, renting out my unused womb to a childless couple and suicide. I know this will pass. I know this is only temporary - the economy will get better and we will get through this and things will return to the way they were and everything will be back on track. I know that this experience will teach me things about life that I never learned by dropping out of school and running home to mom - by living for years (and still living, to some extent) on charity and pity.
I just wish we were there now.
And even though money is tight and the thought of the debt that my mother and I are in due to home repairs and things of that nature astonishes and chills me? I went shopping last night. I bought a book and 2 movies and spent $30 in my store. Part of it was due to retail therapy - I am in a dark place and I feel bad and when I feel bad I have 2 options: Mess With My Hair or Buy Something. Well I cut about 6 inches off my hair two nights ago and it didn't help, so I picked up some things at the store and paid cash to avoid eventual interest rates. And on the way home, I got McDonald's from the drive through because I had skipped lunch and needed to clear some things off my TiVo (the contract of which I will not be renewing when it comes due this summer).
Later today, my mother and I are going to be turning in the cable box - not because we're giving up TV or trying to cut back, but because we've upgraded ourselves to digital cable. And not renewing TiVo is just because we've signed up for a DVR with the cable company instead. And after we do that, we're going to Best Buy and we're going to price HDTVs - a sale starts tomorrow and she's going to pick one up for about $400. And when I get my income tax money back? I'm going to get a PS3 and some Blu-Ray - and I'll probably pay a little more and get them through Gamestop (which my company owns) and my store rather than bargain hunt.
Because I know that my store isn't the only one with a daunting sales plan. I am not alone in this - we are a nation unified by debt and unrealistic expectations. And right now we are a nation of people who are tightening their belts and being frugal - and this is reality, this is necessary. But if people stop buying things like books (which, let's face it, are a luxury item) then my store stops making money. If my store stops making money, it has to cut corners. Maybe we'll start keeping shorter hours at the store. Maybe we'll have to close our music department. Maybe when I'm doing the April schedule, I have to cut so many corners that I have to have 3 "hard conversations" with people.
So even if it hurts me - even if it's just a drop in the proverbial bucket - I'm going to keep spending money. I'm going to buy things not just to make myself feel better but to maybe do what I can to help people make their own sales plans. It's not much and it may not make a difference - but I think that if enough people think like I do, maybe it will make a difference. Maybe it will help. So I don't know about you guys, but I plan to keep spending money in my store and at Gamestop and Best Buy and McDonald's.
And I'm going to supersize.