Day 22 - Everyone is an asshole...on their worst day

I felt like a first grader getting ready for school this morning. I made a hot breakfast, my bag lunch was in my backpack, and I rode my bike across a crosswalk, manned by a crossing guard. I start later in the day this week, so maybe I won't be juvenile stereotype in the future. First day of work, here is a rundown of the players. Erin is the assistant manager, she hired me and she has a very pleasant attitude about her job. Trent is another manager, he is not a morning person and he spent the morning training us. Zach is the 18 year old kid who has the same job as me and changes his name tag before he deals with customers, so that he won't get in trouble when they complain. Then there is Caitlyn who was also hired last week, she is a recent grad of U of C, she is also working in a lab on campus to pursue her interest in evolutionary biology.

Caitlyn and I did all of the HR paperwork, then we learned the layout of the store and spent the rest of the day shelving and straightening. This is very familiar from my time at the library, but there is no age old classification system that tells you where the books go. You have to look up every single item and there are subsections that aren't really labeled. On a positive note, I have seen some scarves, rain boots and some blank cards that I will want to purchase with my 35% discount. There are a lot of employees here and some other interesting characters that I am eager to get to know better.

When Trent had to take a phone call, he left the training to Zach. Zach was clearly not comfortable in this position and just started running his mouth on the more candid aspects of the job. He told us how relaxed the job was, so much that he didn't seem fazed that he was recently chewed out for being a no call, no show last week. He told us that we would always want to look busy when the general manger was around, because he was an asshole. I said that's kind of harsh, and he was like, "everyone is an asshole on their worst days". I suppose that is true, maybe Zach gets some points for seeing the situation from more than one angle. Another side note is that my (ahem..) "company", has a no blogging policy, so I'm a real rebel now. For real, I'm going to limit my mention of what happens in the store. Could you imagine if I was sued or fired for not following company policy? I'd rather not tempt fate.