New Job and New Outlook!

SO I want to talk a little about my life on the job because at the moment it's incredibly exciting and quite honestly I want to share it! Sounds like the perfect start for a BLOG POST. 

This story starts the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week when I got a call 

from the zumiez store manager saying I'd been hired as a seasonal sales associate there! (For anyone who is wondering, Zumiez is a board/clothing shop. We have one at the Provo Town Center mall, and the one I now work at, located in the University mall. It looks like this:)

My first day was Black Friday, and I have to say it was extremely intimidating. I'd had about 2 hours of training when I showed up Friday and they said "GO!" Zumiez is a very sales-driven company and in order to do well there your expected to meet a certain sales goal every day. Black Friday, I failed woefully. It was, in fact, a spectacular failure.

My second day of work was today and I was nervous, expecting it to go about like how the first day had gone. This was depressing since I already have a job I'm not too fond of (if your familiar with any of my other posts, that would be the MTC cafeteria worker one.) Especially scary was when I showed up and found it was just me and my manager scheduled for a couple hours; I was positive this day would go just awful. But it turned out to be great! The job didn't get easier today, but my manager took the time to sit me down and train me. He might have taught me how to ring customer's purchases up on the cash register while he was shouting from across the store on a ladder while getting another customer shoes, but it worked surprisingly well.

After he taught me the basic skills of doing my job, the manager set me loose to see what I could sell. At this point I was surprised to find how much a lot of my classes have helped prepare me to be a sales associate. To sell to a customer you have to be able to approach them and start a conversation, experience for which my Mission Prep class has well prepared me. I was extremely grateful for how much easier the practice as a missionary made going up and talking to people in the store. 

Another tactic needed to be a salesperson is good communication skills, which I've gained from every english or writing class I've ever taken, present Writing 150 class included. At some point this semester prof. Steadman told me in my writing I needed to cut out all the unnecessary things and get to the point of what I was trying to say. I was amazed at how well that worked when applied to a sales pitch too. 

At the end of the shift, I had not only met my sales goal but had doubled it. As I walked out of the store my manager slapped me a high five and simply said "girl you killed it today!"

It was a pretty great feeling.

The hard part now is that this job at zumiez is only seasonal, unless I do as good every day as I did today. Until I know if I'll keep this job, I'm keeping my MTC one so I can pay to continue going to school full-time. Sounds pretty fun, huh. But it's amazing the difference there is between a job i don't like much and a job I'm already loving. 

Lesson of the day: for the things we love, it takes a little and sometimes a lot of sacrifice. But to me, I think it's a sacrifice worth making.