Updates...

So things here have been busy.
The past few weeks I have been working 40 hour weeks, and keeping on my toes with all the fun things that that entails.
Today I found out that I'm officially full time starting tomorrow!
- While I was working 'full time' before, the difference includes benefits, assured hours (they can't hire someone and drop me to 20 hrs a week) and an increase in pay! I also get more responsibilities and tasks to do including some supervision of others and such...

Announcements aside, I'll catch you up to date on the few eventful things of the past weeks.

Last Sunday evening, I drove up to Silverthorn, CO to assist with the transition of the Old Navy Outlet there into a regular Old Navy store.
Aside from a meeting with the Arapahoe County Police mere minutes after leaving the house and getting pulled over, the ride was uneventful. (needless to say, the ticket was minimal, and I think he pulled me over because of th FL plates that are still on my car. The SUV ahead of me was pulling away from me, and the car behind me was catching up, yet I got the ticket... hmm) In my defense, it was the first ticket I have ever received, and I was mortified. Come to think of it, that was the first time I had ever even been pulled over. So is that a 1/1 a good thing? :)

Anyway, my little car made it over the mountains well, and I'm glad I had gotten an oil change and tire rotation on my day off the week before. The aspens in the mountains were just starting to turn gold, and as the sun was setting, I made it safely to the hotel that I was staying in for the next two nights. I had a room to myself both nights as they had extra rooms, and my manager Justin, who I was to share with got one of those! So I had a whole extra bed to lay my things out on and spread out.

Monday morning I was up early, 4:30am to grab some coffee on the way to the store. We had our first truck arriving at 6:00am and so we needed to be there a little earlier to set up and such. Silverton and Dillion, are really not much more than ski lodges and the rather large outlet mall that Old Navy was in. Supposedly the cities become more busy during ski season, but to me it looked absolutely dead while I was there. I met some nice people from other Old Navy's as far away as Grand Junction and Pueblo, along with the majority of workers coming from the Denver area stores. The nice thing was that the people who were there were all extremely hard workers and we got the mountain of boxes unpacked relatively quickly. The second semi truck of the day was only half full (the first was jam packed) and so I was out and back to the hotel by 4:30pm. I was sore, tired and ready for dinner. I went out to Ruby Tuesday's with a couple of the managers from other stores and two others from an Old Navy to the North of mine. It was a nice dinner and relaxing, which was needed after running (literally) for 9.5 hours of work.

Tuesday was basically a repeat of Monday, with the main difference being that I had to scrape my windshield before being able to drive to the store. After the single (full) semi truck was emptied, signs were put up, manikins clothed, and extra clothing backstocked, I was on the road home, enjoying the rather relaxing drive home through the mountains.

All in all, it was a really fun, but extremely busy trip. One of the side benefits to the trip was that I got to spend time with my store's DM (or District Manager) who is an extremely nice woman who I got to know and who even had me doing a few tasks for her, like moving things and setting displays. It's always good when an upper level person sees your Calvinist Dutch work ethic and realizes that you don't things by halves and then asks you do some more complicated tasks. Never hurts to show one's best to Management!

So now things are settling back to normal at my own store, and I'm getting back to the routine of the weekly schedule. It was fun to be away but coming back makes you grateful for the things that go better in your store. And it's always nice to have people say they are glad you are back. Even if I was only gone for a few days!