Last summer, I worked at a department store in the city. I won’t name the store or anyone’s name for privacy reasons but I worked at this store for about 3 months before I quit. When I started this job, I was expecting it to be good smooth running based on the manager’s impression. For the record before I continue with this story, the manager is an amazing guy and was very supportive when I quit and understanding. Everyone else at that job was horrible though. On my first day of the job, the manager let me know where everything I needed was and was very welcoming. I was a working as a cashier and had training only for 20 minutes the day of my interview. So when I went my first full day, I was naturally as expected still having trouble with the register since I had very little time to train and I also never worked in a big department store like that.

My other jobs were Party City and HomeGoods which in only Party City was I working as cashier but mostly on the floor. HomeGoods was a job I quit in a month because they only had me as a cart attendant and also gave me no hours. The register at Party City was easier to understand than this store because it was mainly party supplies. However at this department store, there was clothing, shoes, home decor, accessories, snacks etc. Basically, working the register there was more difficult.

On my first day I was put on the very first register which isn’t connected to everyone else’s registers. The set up was weird but imagine a desk, a gap next to it, then a whole line of connected desks. I was placed on register 1 which was the one away from the line of registers. This made me uneasy, but I didn’t wanna complain it was only my first day. I did ask for help here and there to some coworkers and they were very nice about it. However this one supervisor did not like that. She also didn’t like that I placed loose hangers on the side of the floor against the wall away from anyone which I explained to her why I did so. We have a box for hangers that don’t have clothing on them, but when the line is so long, I just decided to throw the on the side on my register since i’m against the wall, and put them all one time in the box after the line goes down. The hangers were not in anyone’s way, weren’t a hazard to anyone and it was just a smart move to make to make sure the line went down quick and get each customer rung up. The supervisor came and yelled at me even after I explained to her why I did what I did and threatened to get the manager on me. At this point I just ignored her and kept ringing up customers. A different manager came to me and asked me what was the issue and when I explained to her she understood but had this weird facial expression and tone. Little did I know that was just the start of hell in that job. In that moment while I was being yelled at not only in front of the coworkers but my customer I was ringing up as well, and talked down as if I was nothing made me feel like I wished I was anonymous.