PART-TIME JOB
things to check before you begin
Part-time job
Things to check before you start work
Does your retirement leave you time to spare? Wouldn’t it be dandy having a few extra bucks rolling around in your pocket? That’s the reasoning I used to set me on the path of looking for a little part-time job. Nothing complicated, I told myself. And nothing too strenuous on this seventy-plus age body.
A friend of mine also in the retirement-plus age bracket told me she had been working at a second-hand store part-time for a couple of years. She said they were very short of help. They’d just lost several employees and as they are a small shop, it left them in a bind.
As a frequent visitor to second-hand stores, I thought that might be a good idea for me, too. If she could handle it, I certainly should be able to. My friend said she’d put in a good word for me with the boss.
When I arrived to apply for the job, her boss, an attractive and friendly young man, struck me as a personable and easygoing sort. He asked me what hours would work best for me, morning or evening. The schedule would be no more than twenty hours per week. There was paid vacation time and a retirement plan. He rattled off the benefits which did not mean much to me since I didn’t plan to make a career out of clerking at a second-hand store or any other part-time job I might take at my age.
My first clue that the job might not be as uncomplicated as I pictured it in my retirement fogged mind, was the pre-hire paperwork he set in front of me. At first, there were only a few pages that I needed to sign and date. Okay, that’s fine, I told myself digging for my glasses and squinting to read the small print.
Those pages signed and dated, I sighed. Guess I’m going to do it.
I was surprised when that short stack of pages was replaced with a stack about an inch thick. My new boss went into drone mode briefly explaining each page and hovering nearby while I signed, dated, and initialed papers until my carpal tunnel started to howl and my trigger finger cramped.
When I finally finished the pile, he instructed me to come in the next day for my first shift. “Oh, and we’ll be emailing you a link for the online training you will need to study in order to work here.”
My mind went into a merry-go-round of confusion. Online training to be a clerk in a secondhand store. Surely he was jesting. What were they going to teach me online? Not to worry, I told myself. It’s probably a video on how to lift without hurting your back.
“Keep track of your time online with the training. You’ll be paid for it,” he said as I rose to leave his office.
I fumbled for my keys and took my leave, wondering if he was serious. Paid for watching some video online? Sweet.
Two hours into the online course on blood-born pathogens and the accompanying pop quizzes that had to be completed correctly before going onto the next quadrant of training, I was getting the idea that this journey into modern part-time work was a tad more complicated than I’d remembered from days of old. I stopped midcourse, deciding maybe I’d misunderstood my new boss and maybe I only needed the bit about lifting heavy objects. I’d ask him tomorrow when I came to work.
The thought winged out of my mind the next day when I arrived and he whisked intricate color charts and schedules past me with a smiling “You’ll catch on. It’s very simple.” He spoke at about 750 Words Per Minute and I hear at about 300 WPM so we had a slight communications gap. I figured the women working the floor and the cash registers would fill in the gaps of my spotty comprehension.
I stepped behind the counter to watch a clerk ring up an order. There were no price tags on the clothing.
“You simply look them up in this book and scan the code. See,” the experienced clerk whisked open a plastic jacketed book and thumbed the pages. “See? Women’s short sleeve blouses, sleeveless blouses, then long sleeve blouses, shorts, slacks, and…” she turned a page. “Unless they are on sale.” She grabbed a jacket that hung on a rack behind us. On the cuff there hung a tiny plastic thread, like one of those threads that should hold a price tag or the kind that binds two socks together as a pair until you want to wear them for the first time. “If this color is green, the item is half price, and you scan it on the next page. It’s all very simple.”
I was squinting at the itsy bitsy bit of plastic trying to determine if it was dark green or dark blue as she continued speaking.
“Now, today we have three colors that are on sale. They are…”
She was interrupted when a customer brought up an item that amazingly had a standard price tag on it. I thought she would simply scan it. Nah. She read the unreadable-to-me string of numbers on the bottom of the tag and determined that the item had been on the rack for more than a month.
“This one,” she said, “is a past date so we need to enter it by hand.” She deftly entered a string of ten numbers on the register and tapped in one-half the price of the tag.
By the time I’d been at the register for a couple of hours, my eyes felt like they were being sucked out of my head from trying to read the tiny numbers.? Everything was beginning to blur. Did I mention that I was wearing a mask? We all were required to wear one, so my glasses were constantly fogging and needing to be wiped. They had come on and off my face more than fifty times, dislodging my hearing aids which came dangling down my cheeks.
Seems that the simple world of a part-time job might require a little testing of the water before you dive into the tank.
I still plan to find a part-time job that is a good fit for me and I have lined out a few questions, not necessarily in order of importance, that I’ll want answers to before I take the next plunge.
1. Hours available (I mentally separate this into daylight or dark, and rush-hour or non.)
2. Distance from home
3. Training requirements
4. Stairs and the frequency of using them
5. Standing or sitting
6. On the computer or off
7. Variety of duties
8. Dealing with public or backroom
9. Indoors or out
10. Number of other employees
11. Machinery usage
12. Skills required
13. Education required
14. Summary of tasks
If you think of more options that would help smooth the part-time job quest please drop me a response so I can add them to the list. Thank you, Gail at mcnallytalesunleashed.com
