The only fly in the ointment was that I was only scheduled to work 10 hours that week, but my manager assured me that hours were allocated according to who sold the most clothes, and that my hours would pick up once we opened. The week that the store finally opened, I was so excited! I carefully picked out an outfit at 'shopping night,' and got all ready to start. In the meantime, I'd go home at night and describe the clothes to my mom, who was impatiently awaiting access to my employee discount. Moving boxes, tagging clothes and arranging them according to color and size, meeting the other girls, etc. We were getting the store set up, and I had a blast. Tons of us.įor the first week, or so, things were great. And at the scores of girls who had also been hired to man the store. I showed up on the designated afternoon, got admitted to the still-under-construction store, and looked around in awe at the piles upon piles of brand-new, still-in-bags clothes. Inexplicably, I was hired and told to show up to help get the store ready for opening. So anyway, I got an interview, in which I burbled on and on about how much I loved their clothes and how I was really responsible and how I was really looking forward to to working my first 40-hour-a-week job before I went to college (yes, I was a geek. At the time, I thought their stuff was the height of coolness, despite the fact that that summer, one of their featured items was bikini/bra-style tops meant to be worn as actual shirts. I knew I wanted a summer job, so when I saw that a new Express store was opening at our local mall, I applied.įor those unfamiliar, Express is a women's clothing store that, in the early '90s, sold trendy-ish clothes in French-themed stores.

I like to think my absence helped a little). I'd just quit the softball team, having realized at last that I had neither softball talent nor the patience to spend the season sitting on the bench so as not to bring down my team's chances at a state championship (they did, by the way, win that year. It was spring of my Senior year of high school. This one is for Sam,who commented asking how I managed to get fired from a retail clothing store:

Hightail express quits upon opening