Saturday, November 26, 2011

I Almost Forgot My Password...

It’s been a really long time since I’ve written. Mostly because what has happened is still a sensitive topic to me. For those of you who don’t know, I left my job as an assistant buyer, and took another job in the company.

The past few months have been really hard on me. I feel like I failed at my dream job. I worked so hard to get that position, and from day one, I could tell that it wasn’t going to be easy. And it wasn’t. I struggled to learn the ropes, and I was desperate to prove that they had made the right decision. But in reality, I hated my job. I struggled to understand the procedures and steps necessary. I felt alone and ostracized. In true “middle-school” fashion, my co-workers would go to lunch together every day, and not ask me to join them. Finally, I confronted one of them, and asked why I was never invited. I was told that since I was an assistant, and they were senior buyers, it wouldn’t be appropriate. So I ate alone at my desk every day.

It wasn’t just that. I was not happy. Every night, I went home with stress; my ulcer was flaring up due to what I was going through, and almost every night, I cried on Dave’s chest, miserable. But I was determined to stick it out.

But it wasn’t enough. I still had troubles, and my superiors were getting frustrated with me. Slowly, I noticed changes occurring that made me wonder where I fit into the department. And when I spoke to my supervisor, it was made clear to me that they didn’t plan to keep me in the department. They advised me to find a new position.

I was devastated. I had worked so hard to achieve this promotion. I moved my entire family to a state where we had no family, no support system; and for it not to work out was a crushing blow. For days on end, I was practically hysterical. At this time, Dave had just been hired at his new job, but it was only part-time, and at an hourly rate. I had no clue how I was going to pay my bills.

Since I have such a long history with the company, and they had paid to relocate me, I worked with my Human Resources department to find another job. I managed to find one in the call center for our website. It’s a good job; I get to work with customers again, and I already had the “experience” of working on the sales floor.

But there are still times where I feel frustrated. All that hard work, and it feels like I have to start all over again. My mother keeps trying to convince me to move back home, but right now, we can’t afford to do that. We are broke, to put it simply. Sure, we can make our expenses, but just barely. And until we have some money put aside, and job offers waiting for us back in AZ, we’re stuck in Seattle for the time being.

I really don’t know what to do. I don’t know if we should go back to AZ (there is a new store opening in Phoenix in the fall, and I could interview for that.) But do I want to be a department manager for the rest of my life? I moved to Seattle to further my career, and now that I’m having to start over, should I stay in Washington, where the company headquarters are?

I really miss my family, and it’s so hard to be apart from them. But part of me feels that I need to do this, to focus on my career and its next step. Then the other part of me says “well, it didn’t work out, maybe it’s time to look into another career.” But I’ve been in retail for almost 10 years-I never really did anything else. I don’t know what I would do. And we have so much debt right now; it’s not like I can go back to school. And it took Dave this long to find a job-who’s to say that he would even find another one in AZ?

Now you know why I haven’t written before now. This is what is going on inside my head!

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