As of this writing, I've been technically unemployed for two
full months. Ten years ago, I started a job with Walgreens, working as their
overnight stock boy/cashier while I also worked as an assistant manager at a theater, ran the register at my eventual
father-in-law's music store and worked full time at a gas station where I was
training my replacement to manage it. All I did was work at that time, but I
loved the job. The people were quirky and the job was fun, but it was also
quite physical, which I liked. There was something almost spiritually
fulfilling for me to be awake at 4am, hanging ad tags or stocking shelves. It
had a reflective dreamlike feeling for me. I also loved the company I was
working for. Walgreens treated their employees well and they seemed to have a
vision for the future. After a time, I decided that it was going to be a good
move for me and I made the choice to dedicate most of my energies into working
towards a future with them.
For a decade, I worked there. I moved to Montana to open the
first two stores in the state, fighting strange challenges and problems that
came with being so removed and eventually moved back to Idaho. I progressed in
the company, but never aggressively. While I fully intended to be a store manager
at some point, the learning and the culture was just as important to me. I took
any opportunity to move and try new challenges and work with different
employees.
Eventually my quest took me to Maine and a dozen different
stores, including a stint as the district secretary. All that time, I
progressed. I would regularly get calls from people I'd trained or mentored
many that were above me in the company, asking for my advice or how to do
certain things. I took pride in the massive group of friends and co-workers I
discovered. I was invited to weddings, birthdays and funerals for customers.
For the most part, I adored working corporate retail.
It did have its downsides. Over the years, I worked with some
bad managers and some utterly terrible people and year by year, customers
seemed to get lazier, more ridiculous and self-entitled. At the same time, the
company I'd loved changed. Some of it was a natural evolution, but for every
step forward there were steps back and sideways and sly shuffles to the
diagonal that ended up swooping backwards. The ability to use my artistic side
was stifled in favor of ever increasing minutia and redundancies aimed more at
anticipating problems and covering them up, rather than preventing them. A job
that I was initially more than happy to dedicate all of my time to started to
expect that time, make it a requirement.
As much as I loved the idea of running a beautiful, clean
drug store with a family of trusted employees and loyal customers, I could see
that that was no longer the future direction. Leadership was being reduced in
favor of poorly trained, lower paid subordinates and corporate didn't really
care if your employees left the company, as long as you had enough paperwork
filled out to prevent a lawsuit.
This makes it sound like I'm complaining, and I am. But
despite all of it, I still enjoyed my job and I worked with some fantastic
people, both above and below me. I just didn't feel like it was the place for
me. I was working with truly excellent managers that felt it was expected and
acceptable to work 60+ hours a week and break family obligations in favor of
filling one more shelf or writing one more record of an employee being three
minutes late.
Luckily, at the same time, avenues were opening up for our
family in a way they never had before. A few years back, before moving to
Maine, my wife and I decided that we wanted to run a small motel on the west
coast. We got close, with no money and no help, but things fell through at the
last minute. But we'd had that taste.
Back in August of 2010, while we were in Topsham, ME, and I
was working for Walgreens, I opened a little shop on a website called Etsy,
selling hand-cut Sasquatch silhouette stickers. In the last two years, that
shop had expanded to include decorative switch plate covers, photography,
sculptures and other assorted geekery. This Christmas, Deeply Dapper EXPLODED.
It started to grow in October and by the time Christmas rolled around we had
gotten so busy that Lindsay had quit her job at the hotel and started working
full time for the shop. At the same time, I was continuing to work the 50+
hours a week as a salaried manager at the drug store, then coming home to work
hours and hours on the shop, often overnight, just to keep up.
Finally, we had to make a choice. Continue trying to be a
store manager for a company I was no longer totally sure of or violate my one
cardinal rule – NEVER QUIT A SURE THING and follow my other rule, the one I'd
never gotten to follow before – DREAMS CREATE THE FUTURE.
In January, after the shop had made enough money to secure us
in the months to come if sales took a sudden nose-dive, I leapt. I quit the
company a couple months shy of my ten year anniversary and went to work at
Deeply Dapper full time.
So how's it been going? BUSY. The shop has dropped off quite
a bit and the sales are sporadic. It's not enough to be extremely worrisome,
but growing up poor, it's hard for me to ignore a slim day and look at the
bigger picture, knowing that the sales are no longer extra; they're how we pay
our bills.
It's also incredibly difficult to get used to the idea that I
don't work for Walgreens anymore. Even now, after 60 days away, I still feel
like I'm on an extended vacation and will have to return at any moment. That
was especially bad the first month.
But it's totally awesome, I can't deny that. We're finally
finding our equilibrium and getting used to the idea of both of us in the house
ALL OF THE TIME. Together. We live in a mobile home with less than 1,000 square
feet and we go further than the driveway twice a week. That has taken some
adjustment, but I think that will get significantly easier if this winter ever
ends. We're planning an office extension out back where we can build an artists
and author studio where we can find some solitude. We're doing everything we
can to get ahead on orders so that we can start enjoying the state we live in.
We've been here for years now and have never really had time e to explore it.
And sadly, we've started prepping for Christmas already – it has the potential
to be life changingly awesome if we can keep up the quality and customer service
we need.
I think the most important change I can make is to get myself
into a schedule. Now that it is my job, I don't have an excuse to not update
all of our blogs and websites regularly, there's no reason to not go after book
covers hardcore, all of those new ideas in my big notebook? I'm making them! My
weekly art jam at TRDL is going to get done, I'm going to finish my damn books,
I'm going to read all of these books I didn't write! We're going to get fit! As
I type this, I'm walking at a nice smooth pace on my treadmill. I've walked two
and a half miles, that's pretty cool. I plan to try and do 90% of my writing
either walking or standing. The only time I have an excuse is when I'm
editing... and when I'm particularly lazy.
One of the most important things I need to do is write here
more often. I actually miss having a journal of our lives and I miss hearing
from readers like Randy and Steve. 2013 is gonna be awesome.
~Kristopher
Step Write Up!
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