buckling down.
In 2008, the economy had crashed, and as a 20-year old I was privileged to move to Kokomo short-term to pursue my esthetics education. While classes started, I looked for a job to supplement the help I was getting from my parents (it was part of the original deal — I would help support myself as I pursued this new career. I was extremely fortunate.)
I had been working for four years at that point, and had opened and closed coffee shops, bakeries, and sandwich shops as a shift manager. I had some experience, and had great patience working with the public. My whole career was making the public happy and adding on items to up sales. As was the struggle in 2009, I couldn’t get a call back from anywhere, and when it finally happened — it was Victoria’s Secret at the local mall. Finally, I thought, a way out of food service.
So the day rolled around and I arrived at the mall, and psyched myself out for an extra couple of minutes. This resulted in me being 10 minutes early for my interview, instead of 15. The group interview had already begun in an open area in the mall, because everyone else had already shown up. I walked up to join late, knowing that this was already starting with a penalty. I answered questions, played ball, did the “sell me my pen back to me” spiel, and survived through the interview the best a I could.
By the end, I went to shake the interviewing manager’s hand and was intercepted by a woman in the group — she was well-dressed, well-spoken, and just overall very professional. So professional that she handed over a handwritten, freshly sealed thank-you note to the interviewer. She was figuratively and literally one step ahead of me in every single category.
It was at that moment where I knew for sure — this $8/hour job was not going to me. It didn’t matter that the holidays were coming and they needed extra help, this woman was miles more prepared than I was. It didn’t matter that I’d tried to save face, it absolutely had not been enough. She deserved it more, if I’m honest.
I never got a call back, and to be honest I didn’t expect one.
I learned right then and there what it meant to power through a stressful moment — I had rather severe social anxiety at the time, and it wasn’t serving me. I managed to rally a boost of adrenaline to break through my personal wall…just a few minutes too late. It wasn’t easy then, and it has only become easier today because I threw myself into two fields where first and foremost — my job is to speak to strangers.
I also learned that having even just one blazer in your closet is a huge confident boost during an interview — it doesn’t matter your field. If this woman followed every business protocol in her interview for retail, that’s basically when I learned that when jobs were in such a scarcity, that minimum wage would also need to be won in the same manner.
It’s the pivotal moment that I learned I was going to have to buckle down, be humble, and grateful. It was a wake up call to my invincible feeling that began to ebb after leaving my teens. I internalized this way before I listened to Patrick Lencioni’s “The Ideal Team Player,” but that’s also not a terrible read either.
