I’m almost there

I woke up this morning thinking about Target, yeah the retail store. I started to wonder why the cashiers and floor staff make so little money and then realized I have no idea what they make. I’m probably right. They probably don’t make much above minimum wage but still, I don’t know. That got me thinking about things (again). Cashiers are your frontline face to your customers. They aren’t some marketing wonk sitting in a cubicle in a corporate building, they’re the ones that are either smiling and making eye contact or mumbling and ignoring the customer. Jeez, shouldn’t THESE people be making the big bucks (or the BIGGER bucks anyway)? And that got me thinking further.

If you’ve been following along you’ve been treated to my musings on corporate life and my desire for a change. I’ve been pursuing the most middle-of-the-road path in making any changes. I’ve been checking CareerBuilder.com, Monster.com and contacting headhunters. I’ve been doing some networking and letting folks know I’m on the hunt but beyond that I haven’t let my mind wander much into untrampled paths. Bummer. There’s a ton of stuff on those paths.

I had a bit of a mind expanding experience last night while working on a school paper. I was looking for positive effects of the recession and came across a site about theme parks. Actually a site dedicated to the theme park industry complete with a newsletter and updates like who was installing the newest roller coasters for the coming season. Wow! There are people who don’t just WORK at theme parks they’ve made them their careers! If you’re reading this and rolling your eyes and maybe even ARE one of those career theme parkers, please be kind. I’m here to tell you I’ve been an ass.

Me of all people should have been more insightful. My spousal unit works in an equity theater, he does sound and lights, he’s done over hire stage crew work for concerts and events and when I told a co-worker (yes, a CORPORATE co-worker) what he does she was surprised and confused and admitted she didn’t know people DID that. I was surprised because I couldn’t figure out how else the stage got set, the sound got heard and all that stuff. In other words, it was second nature to me.

There must be plenty of people who don’t consider their retail jobs to be anything less than a career. They aren’t hourly drones they are people who really enjoy what it takes to get the product out on the floor, turn over product for each season (despite the fact that the seasons are usually MONTHS off from the actual seasons). I worked in retail in my youth. I’ve worked the register at grocery stores in the past. Honestly I loved those jobs but they didn’t pay and I wasn’t smart enough to consider them careers and stick with them until they DID start to pay.

There’s a grocery store near me, I worked there back in the 80’s part-time. I loved it, but I had to feed into the notion that it wasn’t a “career”. Had I stayed there, I’m sure by now I’d be a front-end manager or a department manager and I’d have a career. There’s a guy that works there. He worked there back in the 80’s too. He’s the store manager now. I always hear him being paged while I’m shopping. He works hard (from what I can tell) but he always seems happy. I always see him with a smile on his face. He always says hello to regular customers and former employees (I’d fall into both of those categories). What was I THINKING?

There’s a clothing store near me that I shop in fairly regularly. There’s one woman who seems to be there every time I go in. The store carries nice clothes, not fancy but nice casual clothes. This woman is always dressed in a way that is almost a walking advertisement for the clothes available in the store. She’s probably around my age. She is lovely to deal with. I don’t know if she’s a manager or not but she is most likely a full-time employee at the very least. She seems to love her job and the people she deals with. What a lovely feeling that must be.

These people have been under my nose all along. I’ve clearly given thought to them but never connected my thoughts to MY wants and needs. Most importantly I never connected those jobs to the word “career” before. I have a friend who works at Costco. I keep joking that I want to go work at Costco. It’s near my house, you can wear jeans to work (crazy but that’s very appealing to me) I hear they have good benefits and I shop there all time. Everyone keeps rolling their eyes and telling me that I don’t REALLY want to do that, after all I’ve got college degrees, I’m a “professional”. Why is my friend working at Costco any less of a professional than I am?

I was under the mistaken belief that a career meant sitting in an office all day. I’m not that person. I like to be up and moving around. I actually (at some level) enjoy dealing with people. (Those of you who know me, don’t roll your eyes, I’ll explain.) I always tell people that one thing I liked about my grocery store job was that you only had to deal with each individual member of the public for a finite amount of time. They were in and out of your line (and your LIFE) in a few minutes so that squalling brat became nothing more than a memory in a few brief minutes. The upside was that you got to see a lot very nice people or run into people from your circle of acquaintances that you didn’t normally see. “Hey, Kim, great to see you, we really need to get together sometime” that kind of thing.

I even like the more flexible schedules offered out there in retail-land. I don’t really like working Monday through Friday from 9AM-5PM. I don’t. I like the thought of working on Saturday from 10AM-6PM but knowing I’ll have off on Monday while the office wonks are at work. I like the thought that I could go out to breakfast on a weekday when the diners are less crowded and enjoy a leisurely breakfast and a good book (or my husband’s company if he’s off that day, too). Truth be told, I really HATE the regular predictability of office work.

Since the recession has hit and even before then, I’d have conversations with my husband that we don’t have jobs where we DO things anymore, we don’t MAKE things. We sit on our butts in offices and cubicles but what are we DOING? We’re going to meetings. My husband would generously point out that he DOES things when he goes to work. Yes, he does. I don’t. I really feel like I DON’T. Office work comes down to a lot of turf wars and projects to defend your turf and a lot of the actual work could be outsourced. You can’t outsource store personnel, even with those self-checkout lanes (which I hate) you still end up needing people to run some registers and to help out the folks bravely attempting the self-checkout. You have to WORK.

I’ve discounted these jobs for too long.

Of course my problem is finding a way to get into a job like this and still make enough money. Not a fortune, but “enough” and yes I do have a magic number attached to “enough”. For heaven’s sake what OTHER jobs are out there that I haven’t thought about yet?

As I ramped up my job search I kept saying that I wanted firmly “OUT” of the industry that I’ve been working in with the explanation that I didn’t want to do the same dance on a different stage. Silly me, the fact remains that if I stayed in a cubicle/office job I’d still be doing the same dance on a different stage. I want to do a different act altogether, what an AH-HA moment.

It’s funny but I credit my schoolwork for this ah-ha moment. How funny is that? I’m in a Master’s program for Organizational Leadership, very much the office gig type of degree. Who woulda thunk it would lead me down an entirely different path? I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull this off, I don’t know if I’ll find a way to get myself into a job that I actually WANT with enough money to live but I think I may be onto something.