lessons from approx 2 months of work

[cimorene]

I'm still enjoying myself at the work practice. I told my counselor I'd like to apply for an extension of another 2 months from social security and he brought me the papers to sign at work yesterday. (I still haven't been in the cash register! We're all trying to make time to finish the training, but it's busy all the time.)

I'm learning that it's dangerous working in a store with so many things in my areas of extreme interest (linens and decor) but so far I have - by the narrowest of margins - not caved and bought any luxury down pillows or duvets. I probably will buy a down pillow soon (in fact I almost bought one today, but I talked myself into waiting in case one goes on sale in the next few weeks), but I've promised myself that I DEFINITELY won't buy a down duvet until a good one goes on sale because the base price of the good ones is like 150€+ (and the low-end feather ones seem like a waste). However, if they haven't been on sale before the end of my work practice I'll probably buy one anyway to get the employee discount, which is very good. ... On the other hand I went to the web shop of the poshest Finnish department store to compare features and prices and can confidently say that even our most luxurious ones are not TRULY that luxurious, and their prices are also correspondingly lower. They're, you know, modest luxury. You don't NEED any better quality than 90% Muscovy duck down and hypoallergenic cotton cambric or sateen - at that point you probably won't notice the difference once it's inside a duvet or pillow cover - but you can spend twice as much and get something even fancier if you go to Stockmann.

I've also learned that 2 pairs of pants you can wear for work isn't enough if you don't have a dryer! See, if you wear the first pair of jeans for a week and then don't wash them immediately, and then you wear the other pair for two days but before the end of the week you get mud and smushed rice on them, you can't wash them that night and have them be dry the next day, because drying racks take too long, and you'll be stuck with the emergency-only-pants that are too big and have fake pockets. So I guess I need to buy some more pants, and they discontinued the model that my favorite last 2 pairs were which makes buying them without trying them on EXTREMELY iffy... but the last thing we should be doing is going to shopping malls to try on pants right now, not to mention we can't even get out of the driveway because it's full of compacted snow, and we don't have winter tires on (eta on the snow melting from our driveway: another week, maybe?) and the nearest shopping location is Skanssi, which is like 40 minutes from here by car and is a GIANT shopping center and as such I hate it.

I've ALSO also learned that our store doesn't have a separate cleaning service or employee, and while most of the cleaning tasks are divided up among the full-time employees pretty evenly, only the manager and the assistant manager have to clean the bathrooms. I want to say this is the difference between male and female management or something like that, but I honestly don't know why and I haven't dared ask. Maybe it's chain-wide policy or something. Or maybe it's this particular boss's choice.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

very glad things are going so well! Hope the weather is better and the bus ride is okay. Good luck with the cash register.

[cimorene]

<3 Thanks! The weather already is getting better. It's a huge relief to only need one pair of pants and a lighter jacket, and be able to put my hood down and take my outside mittens off! Also there's hardly ANY sheets of ice to traverse! Truly, spring has sprung.