After the Census job, I was still terrified of finding a job. I needed money for loans badly. I had no experience with much of anything except some slight knowledge of web design. I wasn't great at it, but I could put some basic pages together to advertise a small business or something. It wasn't something I was trying to find a job in by any means because I didn't feel good enough.
So, I spent the summer of 2011 designing a web site and logo for a friend of my cousin. I didn't mind it and it freshened up some of my lost CSS and HTML skills but I knew I didn't want a career in this. She did pay me for the work, but overall I had a jobless summer.
At the end of the year, another cousin down in Texas asked if I would want to work down at this retail store during the holidays for a couple months. I knew I needed the job, but I was not wanting to be down there for Christmas. I know that's a terrible decision when you need money, but I just couldn't do it. I would've been so depressed about that. Plus retail was not on my list of jobs to ever do. EVER!
Then the summer of 2012 came and the offer again for this retail store in Texas popped up. Well, I might as well. No holidays I'm going to miss and how bad can this be? I really dreaded this job so much. Having to deal with customers was high anxiety.
I met with 2 of the managers in the middle of the store on a couch which I thought was odd for an interview. They seemed nice and I think they questioned my Census work most seeing as no one knows what an "enumerator" is. I ended up getting this job even though I figured I would.
I was very nervous about this and luckily there was another lady starting the same time as me so I wasn't by myself. There really wasn't any training provided. It was a big store so there was a separate sales and cashier team. I was a cashier. The only training was hands-on training from the other cashiers. They were all very nice and helpful though. It wasn't too bad at all. In fact, a lot of the times I enjoyed checking people out.
But of course cashiering can't just be easy. Since this was an interior decorating store, there was giant furniture people got and had to make claim checks and hold tickets for and it became rather confusing. Calling back over the walkies to ask about an item was a difficult challenge for me. I didn't want everyone to hear how stupid I would sound messing up requests.
This is also where many customer problems came from. Many people called up about weird furniture issues and trying to resolve them was not anywhere near my strength. And of course people were least helpful during these times.
The evil phones seemed to ring all day long. So much, that they should hire people to just answer phones all day. There was a 3 ring rule in that it must be answered within 3 rings. So, I had 3 rings to hope someone else would pick it up. In the event they didn't, I picked it up said my little line and hoped it was an easy customer. I am terrible with phones and mostly stumble over all my words and get into little panics about what to do. Many times I was stuck having to put the customer on hold to ask around what to say to them. Those phones were going to be the death of me. I might also mentioned that I was quizzed over the walkies about how many rings must you answer within. At the time I was never told, so it was pretty embarrassing not to know.
There were other times with some bigger customer issues that you would send over to the customer service guy. He handled a lot of difficult customer complaints. I remember asking him to take a call one time and I was later questioned about that also which I will explain. Click here to continue...
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