Wednesday, October 19, 2005
I'm honestly surprised by how exhausting my job has been. I figured there'd be an adjustment, after all, I was off work all summer long. So I figured the standing-all-day thing would be tiring for a day or two, but I'd quickly get used to it again. WRONG. Well, there's always hope it'll get easier.
I've got to start carrying allergy medicine with me--I suspect I may be having an allergic reaction to all the wool and angora fibers floating around in the air in the store. It doesn't help that we're in the worst of my "Fall Allergy Season", too. I'm not actually sneezing or itching, but my sinuses just swell and burn, and it turns into the ~worst~ sinus headache. I came home Monday night barely able to hold my head up, I was just miserable. That aside, the job is fine. It's easy to keep really busy, which is nice, and it's rarely taxing or particularly difficult. The people I work with are upbeat and pleasant, but honestly, there's very little interaction with them, outside of asking questions like, "Where does this go?" and "Can I take my break now?" I've spent most of my time on the sales floor, which means I'm the one running around from one corner to the other and straightening everything you just left in a crumpled pile on the floor. The fitting room is surprisingly hectic--taking the clothes from people leaving the fitting room and rehanging everything they didn't hang or button correctly, then sorting them according to where in the store they belong and then finding the time to run them out to the racks before someone else comes to try something on. It's been an enlightening experience in a number of ways--first of all, I'll be much more considerate when I'm trying on clothes somewhere else now... I had no idea what a total pain in the ass it is to keep up with it all! It's bad enough in our store, which is relatively upscale--I can't imagine what it must be like doing it in a discount store like WalMart! And secondly: I have begun to look at women's bodies differently. Now, Rusty, check your blood pressure and settle down, I don't mean sexually. But I see all shapes, sizes and colors of women trying on the same clothes (after all, the stock in the store may be varied, but there is a limited number of combinations of the selections we have at one time). They come out of the dressing room to see themselves in the larger, full-length mirrors, sometimes asking my opinion about the way things fit. My first reaction to seeing all the scores and scores of XS and 0 sizes on our racks was eye-rolling disgust. As a large, curvy woman, I often joke that my rotting corpse will never fit into a size 0. But I had this image of what a "Size 0 Woman" looks like--you know, the Olsen twins, Lara Flynn Boyle... tall, bony women who are on the verge of serious health problems because of their poor nutrition. And then working the fitting room, I see the women who are carrying in the Size 0 and XS clothes, and see them trying them on, and they're not like that at all. Most of them are just really petite... at 5'5", I'd have to weigh about 100 lbs. to fit into a zero (scary thin, trust me), but when you're only 5' tall or shorter, that same size looks much more "normal". Sure, they're thin, but they're proportionally thin, not Hollywood Thin. They certainly don't look like they need to be hospitalized, and they're not bony at all. Then I watch the women my height and see their shapes and suddenly realize that I'm not really as fat as I feel. Sure, I still need to lose weight, but maybe I'm not so horribly disfigured after all. And sadly, it's really surprising (though I don't know why) how many women really hate the way they look. They sit and pull and tug at the clothes over their "worst" areas--"It makes my thighs look huge!" "Look how my gut hangs out!", when the truth is, it's just the clothes. For instance, we have a pair of chords on the clearance rack right now. They look so cute, and I was dying to get some--with my discount, I could get them for $10. But after watching everyone else try them on, I see now why they're on the clearance rack: they are cut so square through the waist and hips that most women can't wear them. So to get them to fit over my hips, the waist is going to be at least 6 inches too big for me. But for the relatively few women who don't have much of a curve at the waist, the square pockets exaggerate the shape they're trying to hide. So if they fit you, they don't flatter your figure. Why bother?
In the meantime, I have Mommy Guilt. The new job means that DD has to occasionally ride the bus (oh, the poor tortured child!) and DS has to go to daycare. Now, you'd think that the guilt is about sending The Boy to daycare, but no, that doesn't seem to be a problem. He was excited as all get-out to find out he was going back to play with his friends. When we went in for the first day, he was mobbed by a pack of 4 year old boys all calling his name and trying to hug him. He didn't want to bother saying goodbye to me because there was just too much playing to get done. The Girl, on the other hand, was a different story. Because I couldn't get off of work in time to get to her school to pick her up, she'd have to take the bus (I gave her a key in case Rusty hadn't made it home yet, and we were both sure to be home within 15 minutes of her arrival). Before she could start riding the bus home, the school advised me to have her ride in the morning so that I could introduce her to the busdriver so he'd recognize her and know that she belonged on the bus. At the bus stop, she held my hand and stood silently waiting. She didn't try to talk or even look at the other kids. After she got on, she found a seat near the front, and waved to me through the window with the saddest little face... I smiled and waved at her and turned to walk back home so she wouldn't see me flooded with guilt. Luckily, her school has a fall break this week, so I plan to take her brother to daycare and spend the day alone with her to give her some "Mommy Time" she apparently really needs right now.
I've got to start carrying allergy medicine with me--I suspect I may be having an allergic reaction to all the wool and angora fibers floating around in the air in the store. It doesn't help that we're in the worst of my "Fall Allergy Season", too. I'm not actually sneezing or itching, but my sinuses just swell and burn, and it turns into the ~worst~ sinus headache. I came home Monday night barely able to hold my head up, I was just miserable. That aside, the job is fine. It's easy to keep really busy, which is nice, and it's rarely taxing or particularly difficult. The people I work with are upbeat and pleasant, but honestly, there's very little interaction with them, outside of asking questions like, "Where does this go?" and "Can I take my break now?" I've spent most of my time on the sales floor, which means I'm the one running around from one corner to the other and straightening everything you just left in a crumpled pile on the floor. The fitting room is surprisingly hectic--taking the clothes from people leaving the fitting room and rehanging everything they didn't hang or button correctly, then sorting them according to where in the store they belong and then finding the time to run them out to the racks before someone else comes to try something on. It's been an enlightening experience in a number of ways--first of all, I'll be much more considerate when I'm trying on clothes somewhere else now... I had no idea what a total pain in the ass it is to keep up with it all! It's bad enough in our store, which is relatively upscale--I can't imagine what it must be like doing it in a discount store like WalMart! And secondly: I have begun to look at women's bodies differently. Now, Rusty, check your blood pressure and settle down, I don't mean sexually. But I see all shapes, sizes and colors of women trying on the same clothes (after all, the stock in the store may be varied, but there is a limited number of combinations of the selections we have at one time). They come out of the dressing room to see themselves in the larger, full-length mirrors, sometimes asking my opinion about the way things fit. My first reaction to seeing all the scores and scores of XS and 0 sizes on our racks was eye-rolling disgust. As a large, curvy woman, I often joke that my rotting corpse will never fit into a size 0. But I had this image of what a "Size 0 Woman" looks like--you know, the Olsen twins, Lara Flynn Boyle... tall, bony women who are on the verge of serious health problems because of their poor nutrition. And then working the fitting room, I see the women who are carrying in the Size 0 and XS clothes, and see them trying them on, and they're not like that at all. Most of them are just really petite... at 5'5", I'd have to weigh about 100 lbs. to fit into a zero (scary thin, trust me), but when you're only 5' tall or shorter, that same size looks much more "normal". Sure, they're thin, but they're proportionally thin, not Hollywood Thin. They certainly don't look like they need to be hospitalized, and they're not bony at all. Then I watch the women my height and see their shapes and suddenly realize that I'm not really as fat as I feel. Sure, I still need to lose weight, but maybe I'm not so horribly disfigured after all. And sadly, it's really surprising (though I don't know why) how many women really hate the way they look. They sit and pull and tug at the clothes over their "worst" areas--"It makes my thighs look huge!" "Look how my gut hangs out!", when the truth is, it's just the clothes. For instance, we have a pair of chords on the clearance rack right now. They look so cute, and I was dying to get some--with my discount, I could get them for $10. But after watching everyone else try them on, I see now why they're on the clearance rack: they are cut so square through the waist and hips that most women can't wear them. So to get them to fit over my hips, the waist is going to be at least 6 inches too big for me. But for the relatively few women who don't have much of a curve at the waist, the square pockets exaggerate the shape they're trying to hide. So if they fit you, they don't flatter your figure. Why bother?
In the meantime, I have Mommy Guilt. The new job means that DD has to occasionally ride the bus (oh, the poor tortured child!) and DS has to go to daycare. Now, you'd think that the guilt is about sending The Boy to daycare, but no, that doesn't seem to be a problem. He was excited as all get-out to find out he was going back to play with his friends. When we went in for the first day, he was mobbed by a pack of 4 year old boys all calling his name and trying to hug him. He didn't want to bother saying goodbye to me because there was just too much playing to get done. The Girl, on the other hand, was a different story. Because I couldn't get off of work in time to get to her school to pick her up, she'd have to take the bus (I gave her a key in case Rusty hadn't made it home yet, and we were both sure to be home within 15 minutes of her arrival). Before she could start riding the bus home, the school advised me to have her ride in the morning so that I could introduce her to the busdriver so he'd recognize her and know that she belonged on the bus. At the bus stop, she held my hand and stood silently waiting. She didn't try to talk or even look at the other kids. After she got on, she found a seat near the front, and waved to me through the window with the saddest little face... I smiled and waved at her and turned to walk back home so she wouldn't see me flooded with guilt. Luckily, her school has a fall break this week, so I plan to take her brother to daycare and spend the day alone with her to give her some "Mommy Time" she apparently really needs right now.
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