Hello everyone!

I'm back from my small blogging slump and ready to conquer this blog again! As some of you may know, if you stay up to date with my blog, I recently got a grown up job, I started temping (which is a whole other blog post!). And as the weeks went on I realized there are quite a few thing that my sales associate and barista days have taught me so I decided to compile a list of all the valuable things retail has taught me.

• The Hustle. Lets get real, retail is STRESSFUL! Morning rush at a coffee shop is basically the epitome of stress. Drinks are piling up and customers are yelling at you that they're ready to order and suddenly the phone rings. Talk about wanting to cry, ha! Nothing could prepare me more for an office job except now its emails that are piling up and customers are still yelling at you.

• Communication. Lets be real here, I'm not one for having small talk with a stranger or interacting with people in general (lol). The retail jobs I have helped me become more comfortable talking with people in general which is pretty handy in the real world, not just the office. 

• Working on a Team. yeah, yeah, yeah you need to do team work in school but retail jobs bring a whole other definition to team work. Team work is when you have a line 10 drinks and annoyed customers in front of you and your coworker slides in next to you and starts prepping the next drinks so all you have to do in pour the coffee. Team work is when customers decide to dump alllllllll the shoes in the clearance section on the floor for you to pick up and reorganize and your manager gets on the floor with you to match left and right shoes together. School just doesn't prepare you for true team work.  

• Value of money.  Nothing teaches you about the value of the dollar more than kicking ass all week and getting paid the absolute minimum you could possibly make for 40 hours of work. I earned every cent I made and I treasured it. Working ridiculous hours and an always changing schedule made me think twice before spending an entire paycheck on makeup the day I cashed it.  Even though my paycheck has gotten slightly larger (HUGE emphasis on slightly) I still hold the same principles.

• Positivity. I'm honestly the least positive person probably ever but retail at least help me fake it (fake it til you make girl!). If you come up to the counter that generally means you are ready to order but for most customers your time is their time and if they want to come up to the counter and talk on their phone for 5 minutes before ordering they think they can. Just stand and smile, stand and smile. The same thing applies in all of life, it doesn't help anyone or anything to get negative just power through.