For the holiday season, I decided to take on a second job. There were a multitude of reasons for this second job. I learned over the course of seeing my therapist that financial security is extremely important to me and my mental well-being. However, when I took the Quality job at a company over 70 miles away from home and thought I could commute by train, I didn’t realize I’d need a car in the general vicinity of work because of the lack of adequate public transportation.
So, to work at a job far away from home, not only did I need to regularly purchase a train ticket, I also needed another car: one to get me from home to the train station, and one to get me from the train station to work. So I ended up buying a car during the height of the pandemic when the global supply chain was constrained to hell.
In hindsight, it was probably not a good decision to take the job in the first place, but now that I’ve committed, the only logical course of action was to escalate my commitment. Right?
All of this meant that I was spending a large amount of money just to be able to commute to work. And now that I’ve finished graduate school as well, my student loans were coming due – whenever the student loan payment pause ends.
What this translated to was an immense feeling of financial insecurity.
And so to pay for my commute to my first job, I needed a second job.
I wanted something closer to home. Some place that would allow me to do something different than what I was already doing. I didn’t want to sit in front of a computer for twelve-plus hours a day, so something that would let me be active and allow me to work outside of normal business hours for an office job.
I didn’t have any experience outside of Quality for medical devices though, which made things difficult. I figured retail would be open to me working. They just need bodies, and mine was extra large, so that should count for something. But then retailers like Target or Costco seemed to want some type of retail experience because neither of them would call me.
Kohl’s was initially interested. They invited me to schedule a phone interview, but when the date and time came for my phone interview, no one called me (they had indicated someone would). They didn’t even offer a way to reach out, only communicating with me through unchecked email addresses and text messages. If they’re ghosting potential employees like that, it’s no wonder they’re dying as a company.
Crate and Barrel eventually called though. They were in desperate need of warm bodies and were willing to take anyone.
I was invited by one of the store managers to show up at the store for an in-person interview. The interview lasted a whole ten minutes, with the manager, Alex, seemingly distracted and uninterested in the whole process as he asked me canned, generic interview questions such as “Give me an example of when you went above and beyond for a customer.” As I answered each of the questions, the manager would stare off into the distance and nod absent-mindedly. I gave some damn fine answers to his questions. I even had examples to further support my answers, but he wrote nothing down.
After answering all the generic interview questions, Alex asked me for my availability, which seemed to be what he was really interested in. Once he found out I could work nights and weekends, he offered me the job, shook his hands, then rushed out to the store floor, leaving me standing, staring after him.
Isis thought me taking a second job was a terrible idea, but then, financial security isn’t necessary for her mental health.
She also likes her family – or at least they’re her family. She doesn’t dread her sister – who we’ve dubbed “The Queen of England” – visiting every few months from Wisconsin like I do. This was another reason for taking the job. Instead of wasting my whole weekend sitting around Isis’ brother’s house and watching the kids and doing whatever the Queen of England wanted to do – which was usually something boring and poorly planned – I could, instead, be stocking shelves, carrying out online orders, and move around, being active, all while making a fantastic sixteen dollars an hour.
While retailers and employers might see sixteen dollars an hour as a lot of money, it really isn’t that much money, especially during these inflationary times. As I was being introduced to people, I was not only being told everyone’s name, but also what their second job was.
“This is Dianne. She works in customer service here, but her other job is as a customer service specialist for…”
“This is Jose. He’s a stocker like you, but during the day, he works at a restaurant down the street.”
People, likewise, were interested in where else I worked. It was often the first question they’d ask me after they learned my name. It was shocking how many people who worked at Crate and Barrel had second jobs. I thought I was a special nut case doing it for my mental health, but having a second job at Crate and Barrel was the norm, not the outlier. It really says something about our society when having a second job is a necessity for people to live. There is so much talk these days about “living our best life,” but it’s just not possible when people are working twelve to fifteen hours a day just to get by – all while the people and the company they’re working for are raking in record profits.
On my first day on the job, I was trained by an elderly man named Sean. He was a retired computer programmer, having worked for big tobacco as well as one of the big four accounting firms. He had been at Crate and Barrel for a little over a year.
“I originally started working to get some exercise and lose some weight. I’ve been able to do that while working here, but now, my wife can’t stop buying things here, so I’m really only working for the discount,” Sean told me as we waited for the door to the service elevator to open. “You’ll like it here. The people are nice. Things get crazy, but it happens everywhere. Just do what you’re told and everything will be fine.”
The job also satisfied my desire to learn some tangible skills. I understood how to meet the quality system requirements for ISO 9001 and ISO 13485, but I didn’t know how to actually do anything. Isis was the handy one at home and she reminded me and all of our friends every opportunity she had.
I was very happy and proud when on my first day at Crate and Barrel, I was trained on how to use the baler and a pallet jack. Things I never would have had the opportunity to learn as the Quality Director of a medical device company.
“Do they know what you do?” Isis asked me, incredulous when I declared to her that I had learned how to use the baler.
“Of course they do. That was the first thing everyone asked me when they met me.”
“And?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “And?”
“They don’t find it odd that a Director of Quality for a med device company is working there?”
“No. I just say I need the money and they just nod their head in understanding.”
“You know sixteen dollars an hour isn’t very much, right?”
I nod my head. Isis had recently been looking at the Crate and Barrel site for things she wanted to buy. She had been looking at forks lately because for some reason, all of ours were disappearing and we only had about three forks left in the house.
“Did you know the forks at Crate and Barrel cost about $6 dollars each!?” Isis exclaimed. “That means you’re making less than 3 forks an hour!”
My first paycheck from Crate and Barrel was for $236.47. Isis laughed at me and asked me what I was going to do with the money.
“I’m going to put it into my savings account.”
“Why? It’s not going to do you any good in there with all this inflation and interest rates for savings accounts falling behind.”
Isis doesn’t get it, and I don’t expect her to. I’m working to save a little extra money because these days, I feel poor. And when I feel poor, I get stressed. And when I get stressed, my mental health deteriorates.
It’s only been a week or so at Crate and Barrel, but when I walk into work, my coworkers there, people I’ve just barely met greet me, they make genuine exclamations, happy that I’ve shown up to work, to share in the burden of stocking shelves, delivering orders, going on scavenger hunts throughout the warehouse and store floor to fulfill online orders, all for a measly sixteen dollars an hour, or less than 3 Crate and Barrel forks an hour. There is a sense of camaraderie shared in poverty, something that doesn’t seem to exist at the medical device companies where I work – where the R&D engineers run wild and act like entitled, spoiled brats because the Chief Scientific Officer Eli has told them they’re all special unique snowflakes and that Quality is just “silly administrative paperwork”.
It’s different, and for that, I am thankful. So far, I am happy. I’m not living my best life…not yet anyway. But once I feel financially secure, I’ll be one step closer. But until then, it’s an escalation of commitment.