Retail makes me want to punch people constantly. Inane questions, bitchy comments, treating me like crap because I'm unimportant. It also teaches you that it's probably not professional or appropriate to punch people in the face, which is a valuable life lesson.

I'm spent. I'm done. Take me out to the fashion yard and shoot me; surely that would be more pleasurable than another day in this place. I'm beaten down and maybe it's because most people that come through the door treat me like nothing. Maybe that's why I don't feel like I'm good enough to be somewhere else.

Someone thought I was Canadian.

Thought you should know.

Straightening wet hair.

Don't try it. It doesn't work. In fact, it actively makes your hair look worse.

I recommend you go buy kirby grips and pin the hell out of your hair until it looks presentable.

Or remember to bring a hairdryer next time.

Or that.

Accents.

You would never be able to guess where I come from by hearing my accent. Never.

Every time I meet somebody new, I have to go through the same situation:

"You're not from around here, are you?"

"Yeah, I am."

"Really? You sound *insert accent here*"

"Really. I'm from here."

"Oh."

Usually, it's American, South African or Australian. If you heard me speak, you'd laugh. I have this crazy accent that has adopted little bits of everywhere I've been and formed together into one really strange accent, causing most people to question whether or not I'm legal to be in the country.

I guess the tan doesn't help.

The best things in life are free....but I want your money.

I have an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. This may be due to an unsavoury tuna sandwich eaten earlier, but the most likely cause is the fact that I have just taken a look at my bank account. I don't know why it shocks me every time I log in. I don't expect to have mysteriously been donated a substantial amount of money, but I am uneasy being so broke and not being able to do anything about it.

I was doing really well. I had saved a few grand, was earning enough to keep saving. I wanted to go travelling and to not have to worry. Now I worry about filling up with petrol to travel into town. I then bought a new car. Did I need one? No. How much did I throw away? Thousands. Thousands I didn't actually have, need I add. I took out a loan, bought a convertible, thought I was living the dream.. and then it was revealed to me that my pay had in fact been done incorrectly for the past ten months, and I owed a considerable amount of money. Again, money I did not have. I had to make the loan bigger, and I had to give away most of my savings to try and get it down a bit.

So, here we are, at the end of November. I've bought most of my Christmas presents, so I'm poor as anything. The thing that kind of kills me is that I really enjoy my job; I love it; but I can't really afford it.  I'm not driven by money whatsoever, but I crave survival.

My car costs me over £500 a month. A MONTH! This is insane! I'd be cheaper to move out and give up the car! I'd probably lose some weight as well. Oh, I buy a lot of food. Could do with giving that up as well; that would help the weight loss.

It baffles me that it would be cheaper to move out and pay rent than it is to live at home for free, but I live half an hour away from the city centre and thus have to drive everywhere. If I want to come home after a night out, I have to drive, catch a bus (until 3am on a Friday or Saturday) or take a taxi home (£25 at least.)

I buy food anyway. I'm rarely at home at mealtimes so don't eat with my family very often, so I buy my own meals, either out or at the supermarket. I do my own laundry. I don't actually think moving out would be very drastic at all...

What's the plural of crisis?

I'm having a mid-twenties crisis. Not the most crucial of crises, I understand, but one nonetheless. I am in full-time employment, in a respected establishment, yet I find myself underwhelmed and unfulfilled by life. My job, when you get down to the nitty gritty, is telling people how they look in an outfit. I did not go to University for that. I did not learn a second language or travel the world so that I could do that. I don't think my parents raised me to do that, either. I feel wasted, and at the same time, I feel unable to do anything else as I've been conditioned into retail, believing this is all I am capable of. This crisis has come about because it has been a year since I graduated, and surely, I should have found myself by now, right? A whole year has passed and I'm none the wiser. In fact, nothing has changed except my haircut.

I find myself constantly comparing myself to others; asking why they seem to find it so much easier than I do.

Why didn't I choose a more focused degree? Surely I'd have a job by now if I did?
Well, no. I chose the degree that I was most passionate about and desperately wanted to do. I would not have lasted four years in a degree that didn't thrill me. I barely lasted in one that did. So, if it wasn't my degree choice, what was it?

Why didn't I quit this job years ago and get more experience in an office?
Well, no. I did work experience in an office when I was younger and left with a firm idea that it wasn't for me. I dislike the idea of sitting behind a desk for the rest of my life, however, it is what I do at work now anyway, so there wouldn't be much difference. But I didn't want to leave years ago. I was happy, and I am happy, doing what I do. For now. There has never been a question that I wouldn't leave - this is a temporary job; something to pay the bills while I mull over my life. If I wanted to leave, I would have left.

I feel like I'm wasting precious time, that I should try something new before it's too late and escape the clutches of retail.

So, I have a plan.

January: ski holiday with good friends. Enjoy, have a blast, etc.
February/March: spend numerous weeks in the States with good friends. Enjoy, have a blast, etc.
Come back, newly refreshed and fulfilled, with no job in retail. No choice but to find a new job.

Voila.

Tips.

Someone once said, "Never do what you're best at for free." Well, since prostitution isn't an option that I'm considering at the moment, the buck falls on retail. I have battled through seven years of being told that what I do is not a real job, and it sure as hell isn't going to be my career. My family think it's a blip, that I'm biding my time before I embark on becoming the Prime Minister. Suffice to say, I disagree. Retail, if handled correctly, can be a long and satisfying career, spanning from buying to consulting. I never thought I would say that. If you asked me a year ago if I would still be working where I am, I would have laughed. I planned to quit the moment I touched soil after my trip to America last year, but I didn't do it. Instead, I got a new boss, one who is passionate about the business and wants it to not only survive, but thrive. In a world of economic downturns, we've seen shops in our area flounder and fail, leaving a sense of desperation in the air. We are surviving, and we are thriving. We have a niche that works for the city, and people come back to us because of our customer service. For seven years, I have treated every customer the same, and my general rule of thumb is to treat everybody as though they're going to review your performance. I should try that rule out with friends and family and see how well I do... But with customers, you never know who you're ignoring, or who they might go and tell. Take Next for example. A huge chain, crammed full with staff. I lost count when I was there last, but I was blown away by the lack of training in customer service they appear to have. In a shop where there was approximately fifteen customers, there were at least twenty members of staff. I stood in the shoe department holding a shoe like a prized possession for over five minutes, during which I was observed by more than one member of staff. Not one person approached me to ask if I needed help or if I would possibly like a shoe that fit me, or perhaps its twin. In the end, I was so sick of carting a shoe around that I walked out. Next, I would have given you £40 for those shoes. But you blew it. And now I'm telling the world, and I'm going to complain. Sure, the staff might all be minimum-wagers trying to earn some cash while they're at school or uni, but that doesn't mean they can't have any kind of pride in what they do. Retail is and always will be primarily service driven. Yes, the stock needs to be there, accessible and appealing to the target consumer. Yes, Next had a well-stocked shop. Yes, Next was clean and tidy, as twenty members of staff were trying to avoid any kind of interaction with customers and were endlessly folding clothes that my grandmother wouldn't even wear. I'm disappointed for a number of reasons. We're in a recession, and shops have to do whatever it takes to persuade their customer to part with their cash. After all, stand around with a shoe for five minutes, and that £40 will walk out of the door to another shop where someone might bother to speak to you. I don't even blame the staff, because it's incredibly difficult to approach somebody and ask if they need help. They might actually need help, and then you're kind of stuck helping them, and if you don't know what you're doing, this will be painfully obvious for everyone involved. I blame the management; the people who are apparently in charge of their staff. They need to have continuous training set up so that staff can feel comfortable and confident enough to speak to customers and aid them however needed. This does not have to be a chore - after all, this is what they're hired for. To see a customer clearly in need of assistance and to ignore them is inexcusable. Shopping used to be a treat, where you could go and afford yourself some small luxury. Shopping has the potential to cheer you up, to change your mood, to change your personality with one small purchase (the day I bought my trench coat changed who I am). Now, retail has been taken over by the corporate. It's the same people that own all of the high street chains, and they place little emphasis on the way that staff interact with the customers. I say they're wrong. You should place the majority of your emphasis there. If you have a good experience, a customer will tell their friends they had a good experience, and their friends might in turn come to the shop. If you have a bad experience, a customer will tell all their friends they had a bad experience and not to bother. Word of mouth can make or break retail, and in an environment where people need to be given a reason to spend, you need to be that reason.

Life part one.

Two years ago, I was asked the question, “why are you on this earth?” Without skipping a beat, my response was, “to write.”
If you asked me that question today, I would stare at you blankly, then make some quip about becoming a trophy wife. The truth is, I have no idea what I’m doing, and I don’t know how to make my life start happening. There’s a quote in the Bell Jar which goes as follows: “Only I wasn’t steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus.” Suffice to say, this is how I feel right now. I’m literally bumping from place to place to fill my days; otherwise I have time to think, and that’s not good.
All things considered, I have good prospects. I’m educated, relatively hardworking, and can string a sentence together with eloquent enthusiasm. I’ve lived abroad, travelled, and had many opportunities to experience life with vigor that most people wouldn’t have had.
The one thing that has always stood out about me, and I consider it my main redeeming quality, is my ability with language. All through Primary School, I sat the year above’s exams for language and literature (if you can call Biff, Chip and Kipper literature that is). I have been in the Advanced classes for French for as long as I’ve studied it, including my sixth year when I was allowed to continue studying it for Advanced Higher even when the school had stopped teaching it. In all three Academies I went to, I was in the top set for English. Don’t get me wrong here, I may have been good at language, but I was miserable at the “smart” subjects. I failed chemistry, physics and maths, was mediocre at biology, and the only other subject in which I excelled was administration. In essence, I was bred to write.
As a child, I was never without a book. I used to have at least four books on the go at once; usually I would leave them in different rooms and as my day went on and I moved around the house for various reasons, I would pick up a different book and continue. Mealtime scoldings were for reading at the table. While most parents brag about their childs amazing handling of the lego brick, my parents seemed chuffed to bits with my skill; if they turned to any page of my book, told me the page number and one word from the page, I was able to finish the sentence. Crazy, huh?
Before I was ten years old, I had attempted to write numerous novels. At high school, I discovered my passion for poetry and started writing and reading as much as possible to learn more.
With this in tow, when the teachers started piling on the pressure to select our University courses, I didn’t spend long looking at the prospectus. I knew there were only two subjects for me; English Literature, and French. By this point, I had decided that I wanted to be an interpreter, and to write as a hobby. This didn’t last long - I disliked University, in particular the way that French was taught. It didn’t appeal to me, and I quickly dropped the subject in lieu of Film and Visual Culture. At this point, I didn’t have a longterm plan for how I would utilize that degree, but I wanted to study something fun. I still wasn’t enjoying University and needed something lightweight to keep me there. I started writing for the University newspaper, gaining a good response from topical, opinion based articles. Some resulted in me being skulked on Facebook to receive praise from randoms who enjoyed my writing. Bolstered by the fact that people seemed to enjoy what I loved to do made me seriously consider journalism as a career path. This, in turn, didn’t last long. Meeting and becoming friends with a journalist opened my eyes to the fact that it wasn’t what I wanted. I just wanted to write topical columns, a la Sex in the City.

What have I done with my Masters degree? Well, I framed it, obviously, but no, I’m not using it. I still work at the same place, doing the same job. I’ve been through a couple of really bad years, so my writing has suffered. There’s something similar to writers block where you have so many emotions going around that you can be genuinely afraid of writing as you don’t know what will come out. I didn’t write anything for about two years; not even a poem. I want to get that passion back, the drive to do something with what I’ve been given. I don’t want to bump from home to work and back numbly...

The wanderer returns..

Ok, ok. It's been a while.

Hand on heart, I'd like to apologise for my absence. Life got the better of me and having been through some personal devastation (including but not limited to; homelessness, trial separation, actual separation, reconciliation, yet another separation...) I just stopped writing. I didn't want this to become a place for me to wallow emo-style. I did that at home, thank you very much. And yes, we have a house again. That's a good story.

Well, it's been about a year. How a year can change things...