My second day of work a complete success!

I'm going to try something different with today's post. Instead of writing a bunch of bullet points I'm going to try writing normally. Let's see how this goes.

Today was my second day at the new job. I have never worked at a place where I was as excited to go to work on the second day as I was on the first day. Usually part of my motivation fades after Day 1, but today I was as pumped as ever for my shift. Not only that, but I'm actually sad that I have the weekend off. SAD, can you believe that? How often does one find a job where they are excited to go to work and am upset that they have days off.

I'm sure all this has to do with the fact that I was so stressed out after my last job ended after a work-related injury and its replacement turned out to be more than the usual, dead-end minimum wage jobs I've been used to over the years. Also, as I've said several times already, this is my first management job. For years I've been praying for a promotion from my cashier positions at places like Rite Aid and Speedway but there were never any openings. Even if there were, I was usually the low man on the totem pole, so there would usually be others who had been there longer who would be looked at for promotion before me. Despite my lack of management, however, Walgreens gave me the chance, and I promised my girlfriend and God that I would give it everything I had. Apparently, this means motivation, too.

I'm not going to divulge any company secrets or anything like that, but after several years of retail I've found that many things are common no matter what company you're in, so that made these first two days extremely comfortable for me. Obviously there are things unique to Walgreens that I need to pick up on, and being a manager is TOTALLY different than being a cashier. I'm only on my second day and I'm already starting to see things differently. I look at a shelf of food or carts in the stockroom much differently than I did before. Whether it is just my motivation, excitement, or a genuine change in outlook I don't know. I'm only hoping I can make the feeling permanent.

I accepted the position knowing that I would most likely have to work holidays. I tool it knowing that I wouldn't be able to have the same breaks as the front end people do. I took it knowing that a lot of responsibility would be falling on my shoulders, so I reinforced them with a small notebook for notes, a cell phone with contact information in it and God and my girlfriend in my thoughts. If I can manage to hold on to my motivation and if I can keep my work ethic steady I'm hoping I will not have to look for work for a long, long time--perhaps never again. I'm going to take things one day at a time, work very hard, and give it my all.

I will keep you posted on how it goes :)

On another note, I finished Different Seasons! On to The Tommyknockers!