The good and the bad

>> Sunday, May 23, 2010

First, the good: I had a really good day at work today. I sold more than I had all week. THANK GOODNESS. It's been such a slow week that even Saturday's numbers were worse than a bad Monday. Seriously! So that was good news!

Now, the bad: The first person I sold a handbag to today was someone that I didn't ever want to run into. And I mean EVER.

Let's flashback 5 years, shall we? I was working for a certain company in the staffing industry. After college, I was lost in what I wanted to do and got an interview with a lady at a different staffing company. The job fell through and I didn't hear from the lady for months. Then out of the blue, she called me from a different staffing company. She had changed jobs and offered me a position at the office. I really didn't want to do this type of work, but I agreed to try it out thinking that I could move onto something else if I did this job. Staffing wasn't so bad at first. It was fairly manageable and my coworkers were nice. Slowly, the work load was elevated and our company was given goals that were impossible to attain. My workload suddenly increased by over 100% and demands were made that were hard to keep up with. And when I say that the workload was getting too hard, I speak for all at the company. On top of this, I had just started grad school and was balancing this full time job with 3/4 time grad school at night. In the middle of this, a new salesperson was hired. This salesperson was new to sales and had recently left the police force. Yes, you read that right. A former cop decided to go into sales. Can you picture a salesperson/former cop interrogating employees (unintentionally) and nearly bullying companies to give her job orders? And then once this person left and I had to fill the job, suddenly there really wasn't a job that was open. Maybe, this person was a little too forceful in acquiring job orders and when she left, suddenly these companies grew a spine and told us "NO JOB" over the phone. Yeah, that's pretty much how it was. The really bad part to it all? She was the owner's "pet" employee. They got along too well and he thought she could do no wrong. She made my horrible job even more stressful and drove me to meltdowns at home frequently. Finally, I was let go from the job. My direct boss didn't support this decision, but she had to go with it since the owner had made his decision. I believe that I was let go as an example. I wasn't heartbroken over losing my job since I was already miserable, but I was really disappointed. I had gotten into a job that I didn't even want and then was let go because it was probably obvious that I didn't want the job.

If you haven't guessed that the person I sold a bag to this morning was the saleslady in the story, then you need to have a couple more glasses of wine so that my story begins to make more sense.

Fast forward to this morning: I saw a woman walk into my department looking at an expensive Coach handbag. I asked her if she needed help and she said she knew she wanted that bag, but she wanted to look a little more. Then she told me I looked familiar. She looked vaguely (and I mean really vaguely) familiar to me, but it was more because her profile resembled someone I knew. Then she asked me where I worked before this. I told her a certain staffing company (not the one mentioned above) and then I interned at another company. She still looked puzzled and asked me if I worked at Staffing Company Mentioned Above. I told her that I did a long time ago. She looks at me and says, "I'm Tina! Remember me?"

The wave of emotions that rocked through my body at that moment are indescribable. That part of my life was so miserable, I never wanted to remember it again. Or her. And I feel bad for saying it because she's actually really nice. I get along with her as a person. But working with her was hard. To add insult to injury, the Staffing Company Mentioned Above had merged with two other companies and now had 4 offices. She's now the Branch Manager of one of the locations and earns way more than she did before. On top of it, she's gotten married and has a baby.  Just seeing her was enough to send me over the edge. But hearing that she's really successful and is able to do the things that I want to do now just hurts. And I was embarrassed to have to admit that after 8 years of schooling, I'm working in retail. I've essentially gone nowhere. I really wanted to punch a wall this morning. It took every ounce of strength that I had to keep a smile on my face and look comfortable speaking with her. It was so freaking hard. I wanted to break down afterward, but I held it in. On top of it all, I have a bad feeling that she's going to return that bag.

1 comments:

Faith May 25, 2010 at 7:08 PM  

That sucks! I've had a few run ins with old coworkers, bur nothing like that.

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