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Part 320: End of the Line #3: The Last Day

STOPARRET

Emotional material ahead. If you have been upset by past Record Store Tales, do not read on. 
I’m not fucking kidding.

 

FARE WELL LEBRAIN 0

RECORD STORE TALES Part 320: End of the Line #3 The Last Day

The last two weeks at work after giving my notice were difficult, but now I had light at the end of the tunnel. My boss took me aside and asked me not to buy a hundred CDs with the last of my discount.

One thought that had occurred to me after giving notice was this.  If I had gone to my doctor on December 19 for some Prozac or something, instead of writing my letter of resignation, he immediately would have written me a note for at least two weeks sick leave, right in the middle of the Christmas rush, absolutely screwing them over.  Without question.  That’s how much I had cracked.  I chose not to do that.  Instead I chose to leave on an upstanding note, head held high.  I stated in my letter that I understood that this was the busy season, and I had no desire to cause scheduling problems for them.  I offered to stay until the end of the month of January 2006.  This would allow them plenty of time to find a new manager.

One thing that disappointed me was way that the store handled my departure.  They waited until my last day to announce that I was leaving.  This hurt my feelings. In my experience, when somebody like me leaves, an email will go out a week or two ahead of time. “So-and-so has decided to move on to new opportunities. His-or-her last day will be Friday the 13th,” or whatever. I didn’t get that. I speculate there was a certain amount of shell-shock. When your longest serving employee moves on to greener pastures, it’s hard to spin that positive, I guess? I really don’t know the reason behind it, all I know is that it stung.

Christmas had come and gone. I have almost no memories of that Christmas at all. All I really remember was that I went to Brampton on Christmas Day to meet Jen’s extended family. I met her Uncle Peter, Nana and Granddad for the first time. And I couldn’t stay long, since I had to open the store for our big annual Boxing Day sale the next day.  I have no memories of Boxing Day, New Year’s, or any of the other days from that period. I really only remember my last day.

Thankfully my journal has some details of my last two weeks, but they are few and far between:

Date: 2005/12/27 10:09 am

I have been at this store every second that it has been open since 1:30 pm on December 23.  That is an utterly depressing thought. How many more days of this?  I do not yet know.

Date: 2005/12/28 8:13 pm (I had been told what my final scheduled work day would be)

January 4, 2006, I will be a free man again.  The emotions I am feeling run the entire spectrum.  But on January 5, there’s a good chance I may just sleep the entire day, just because I can.  For the first time in 12 years I will have no reason to think about that store.  That is a very liberating thought.

Date: 2006/01/04 08:00 am

My last day.

I was hoping to just go home quietly today, but I hear there’s something planned.  I know my boss is buying me lunch, I don’t know what else is going on.  I hate being the center of attention at work.  At a party, sure, I’ll gladly take center stage and ham it up.  At work I’d rather just fade into the background.

Meh, I shouldn’t be complaining.  It IS my last day.  Hard to believe.  Well, I’d better be getting ready.

Date: 2006/01/04 10:49 am

The goodbye phonecalls and emails have started pouring in, they made the official announcement of my last day this morning.  It’s overwhelming.  So many people I may never see again!  The emotions I am feeling, they are overwhelming.  No matter how bad it got here, I had so many friends.  I lost sight of that fact.  I sure will miss so many people.

They bought me one of those giant “farewell” cards and had loads of people sign it.  I still have that.  It was a kind gesture.

I still miss a lot of people, but life does go on.  I had never done anything like this before; leaving a place I had worked for so long.  It was like losing a part of myself.  But, that part had become dark and cancerous.  So, my health gradually returned.  I slowly became myself again, a long journey in itself.

To be continued…

RST

Jen and two great co-workers arranged a surprise party for me a couple weeks after.   I have some pics from it.  I also have no idea who that guy is in the picture with me.

Part 320: End of the Line #1: The First Interview

RST

RECORD STORE TALES Part 320:
End of the Line #1: The First Interview

Every journey starts with a first step.

By 2005 it was obvious that my career at the Record Store did not have a future. Franchises were struggling, and I found myself on the outside of the clique of people who ran the show. I had sunk into a deep depression, which was exacerbated daily by the store. I was working as hard as I ever had, returning home exhausted each night, but the writing was on the wall.  It had been for years. I put together a resume and began applying for jobs.

Assembling that first resume was interesting. I hadn’t had to look for a job in over a decade.  Retail experience was one thing, but I was beaten down so much that I struggled to play up my skills. I couldn’t see my strengths. As I worked on it and sought advice from people I trusted within the organization, I realized my experience was anything but limited to a cash register. I had been responsible for training dozens of employees, and even some franchise owners too.  I had been responsible for bank deposits, and sometimes I was carrying thousands of dollars in cash on my person. I had also spent a couple years running our website. I had travelled all over southern Ontario helping to deal with staffing issues. There was so much responsibility, and I had received so little credit for it, that I was selling myself short. Once I got some help and got that resume into shape, I started applying for jobs.  One franchise owner wrote me a glowing letter of recommendation that I still treasure.  It gave my spirit a huge boost.

Not having done a job interview in a decade, I was applying to anything, just to get my interview chops back. I had applied to sales and management-type jobs, but was shot down each time for “only having retail experience”. Even though I had managed a staff many times, it didn’t seem to matter. I worried that spending 10 years in one job wasn’t necessarily a good thing, like I thought it was.

I got a call back from a local chicken restaurant. They were hiring for an assistant manager position, so I gave it a shot. The interview with the manager was set for a Sunday; an odd day for sure but at least I had it off. I put on a pair of dress pants for the first time in a long time; I remember they were uncomfortably tight. I squeezed in and headed off to the interview.  As far as a first interview in years goes, I did pretty well. As this blog attests to, if there’s one thing I like talking about, it’s music. If there’s two, it’s music and myself.  I’m good at conversing, in other words.  (I get this from my Grandfather who had “the gift of gab”.) However I had no food service experience and I really wasn’t all that interested. I was more curious what was out there.

Of course I did not get the job, but that interview experience taught me two things. One, doing an interview is like riding a bike. Once you learn how, you never forget; you might be rusty but it’s easy to climb back on. The second thing I learned was to always make sure I have a pair of dress pants that fit!

PANTS

My second interview went much better.  I had applied for a position at Manulife and I nailed it.  Even though I had given what I still think was the best interview of my life, I did not get the job, and my mood sank further.  These journal entries have all the details:

Date: 2005/12/15 11:37 am

Man, that interview went so well. I was told that I was the best candidate they interviewed, but that there was also an internal candidate who was a favourite.

45 minutes after the interview concluded, I got an email saying the other candidate got the job.

Date: 2005/12/15 19:22 pm

Yeah, I guess I can admit I’m just really bummed right now. I definitely gave the best interview of my life today. And she said so many great things about me:

“You have such great personality, I would hate to see that stifled in you.”

“You are by far the best candidate I have talked to.”

We bonded over Pink Floyd, Helix, the St. Jacobs Market, Walkerton…it was a damn fun interview.

Ahh well. One thing for sure, I had a taste while I toured their building of what a REAL job is. They even had a Tim Horton’s on site! There’s a professionalism that my current job couldn’t even dream of having. It was fantastic. I have a very clear vision of what I want now, and I WILL get it.

Regardless of my bravado, this rejection hit me extremely hard.

To be continued.