Monday, September 29, 2014

My Previous Position

I miss many things about my previous job:

Most of my coworkers - a lively eclectic bunch of about 35 unique individuals

Music - (except for during Christmas shopping season, of course) we enjoyed a nice mix of alterna-pop & retro alterna-pop songs

The view - looking out eighteen-foot tall windows, situated on a clean corner of mostly new low-rise buildings

Parking - a clean parking garage with free parking and security guards who tolerated no foolishness

The surroundings - clean sidewalks, Whole Foods, Starbucks, other retailers aimed at clean customers.

Clean - Did I mention how clean it was where I used to work? It was really clean, and never smelled like drug-tainted urine. Not once.

Respectful workplace - I was not manhandled, squeezed, kissed on the cheek or subjected to unwanted pats on my perky posterior. Sure, there was the occasional (very funny) double entendre joke.

Half of the customers - Half of the customers were just great. Half of them were anxious messes who seemed to have magical thinking that the right toss pillow would fix everything in their life that was amiss.

If the alarm went off in the middle of the night, no one called me. No one expected me to drive down and assess the situation.

I have to remind myself why I left:

The crazy, unpredictable work hours - 3:00 AM to 8:00 AM? Never again.

The on-call employment situation - You want to call me into work with 90 minutes notice on what I thought was my day off? Then you want to fuss about it for a week when I decline? No thanks.

Half of the customers - the aforementioned anxious mess half, like the lady who asked me to gift wrap an item, then timed me, and fussed when it took six minutes, because I had to find a box for the misshapen item

The general lack of appreciation and lack of humanity of working for a publicly traded conglomerate

The lower pay

The variable quality of the goods we sold for moderate prices being hailed as upscale. It was not upscale. Everyone calm down.

The crazy swarms of customers that would descend when a yoga class let out. There were five yoga studios in a two block radius that apparently practice the type of yoga that leads to cranky consumerism.