Wednesday, February 13, 2008

First Day on the Job

Yesterday I went in to my new place of employment for a couple hours of training on the cash register. The girl who I trained with seemed nice, but very, very bored. Either to be training me, or to be working at the store, I wasn't really sure. One of the first customers we rang-up was an acquaintance of hers, and they had quite the conversation, which ended in my trainer telling the woman how ready she was to be "out of here." That's all well and good - she has every right to be bored of being a cashier. It is monotonous. But as a brand new employee, it's not something I really loved hearing... not very encouraging. But fine.
Then, as we walked around the store for an extensive tour (which may not sound necessary, but I assure you it was. This store is laid out in the most bizarre fashion. Today a customer was hanging around check-out waiting for his wife to show up, because he had lost her and was sure he would never find her if he went back into the aisles), we met up with countless members of the staff, whose names I forgot almost as soon as they spoke them. This girl stopped and had little chats with all of these people, and I stood there, feeling useless and... awkward. It wasn't as if I could go back to my register, because this was supposed to be my orientation for the job.
One of the girls we passed on our tour was obviously a friend of hers, and was keeping some secret about "what happened last night," which my trainer was apparently so desperate to hear that she had to get it out of her right then and there. Although just as apparent was the fact that this girl did not want to share this information with me, and so I slowly backed away and looked very interested in the assortment of cheeses behind me, mumbling something or other. Another guy she saw from across the produce section was a break-buddy, and she called out, "What time are we breaking?!" To which he replied, "The usual time." So did she really need to ask?
Which made me realize that perhaps all of these chats with friends were not exactly necessary, unavoidable parts of our tour (I had already begin to suspect), but opportunities for the girl to prove to me how popular she is there. Every time we came across someone, they looked at the two of us and I saw it dawn on their faces that I was the new girl, and I wondered what exactly that meant to them. Am I to be a burden, as I felt on this tour? Someone who asks annoying questions, and makes even worse mistakes? Or is it exciting to see that someone new is stepping in to help carry the busy workload, and maybe even be a new friend? I suppose they, and I, will have to wait and see.

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