smells of the past

So I cleaned up my room yesterday and found this old perfume that my first boyfriend from high school gave me years and years ago...I can't remember what it's called but the perfume is by Escada. I loved the smell of this perfume and used to wear it almost every day. Today I decided to put it on and wear it to work. And that was a big mistake. The whole day, I just thought of the past...what I used to be like in high school...my ex-boyfriend...everything. That perfume made me nostalgic. And I was so tired of the smell even before I arrived to work. During my shift, I swear, the smell seeped into my mouth and I could taste a bitter taste in my mouth. Does perfume expire? I guess I should chuck that bottle away...I just have a hard time throwing away things. This was the first bottle of perfume that I ever owned!!

Anyway, an interesting conversation that I had today during my lunch break was the stigma of working in retail. Everyone in retail knows it, sales associates are at the bottom of the totem pole and if you want to move up, you have to dedicate your time to being a good employee before you can be promoted as a manager. Interestingly enough, decades ago, a sales associate was actually a reputable job because you really had to know your merchandise and people would specialize in their departments. But with the hustle and bustle rushed paced at the end of the 20th century, many retail jobs became lower end jobs. Think about boutique stores to Forever 21...very different store environments with different types of sales associates. But during this recession, the retail industry is one of the few industries that has been forecasted to grow. I am still embarrassed to be working in retail--but my position at Cwonder is more than just a sales associate--I do a lot of visual merchandising and promoting the brand. Cwonder has really surprised me by the caliber of sales associates that they hire. A lot of us are college graduates, students, or transitioning through careers. Today I got to know two more sales associates. One is apparently a R&B/Pop singer who just signed with Time Warner and is working on her first album! We heard some of her music today and it was pretty good! Another one is an accountant who used to work at Deloitte, Deutsche Bank and now will start her job at Ernst&Young in January! Who would have known, right?

From the client's perception of the sales associate, we may have lowly roles in their lives, just servicing them at stores...but at the end of the day, we are also human too. I think the problem arises when customers do not treat sales associates as people. Clients get mad, act rude, demand outrageous things from us and then they also want a discount on top of that. Don't get me wrong, there are also wonderful customers who are patient and treat me like a decent person...but there are other customers who just want to be waited on hand and foot. It's so interesting how people judge you based off of your job and then they either act like they are better than you or they can treat you as equals. This is a big lesson for me to always remember to treat everyone as equals, so when I become successful, I do not loose ground of where I've come from...from the bottom of the totem poll as a sales associate.