At the beginning of the year when I left my job at Crazy Town, the plan was to devote a few months to writing and the vintage business that Nancy and I have been working on. Once we got back from our summer vacation, I would seriously look for employment. Easier said than done. I have sent out resumes, filled out applications and inquired at businesses I frequent. It’s a humbling experience looking for a job, but finally on a tip from a friend, I got an interview at a local flower shop. Thank ya Jeezus.
And it went like this………….
Tell us why you want to work at a flower shop? I love flowers, always have.
Do you know the different varieties of flowers? I do. I’m a gardener.
Do you know how to cut flowers? Yes.
So you have cut flowers and brought them in your home? Yes.
And put them in a vase? Yes.
Do you know that maintaining a flower shop is a lot of work? I know that maintaining a beautiful space requires plenty of grunt work.
We don’t call it grunt work, we call it Mom work. Like as the mom you clean the counters, restock, sweep, take the garbage out. Can you do mom work? Yes.
You aren’t a Lake Girl are you? I don’t know what that means. Do you like to go to the Lake on the weekends? I don’t have a lake to go to. Well, that’s good for us. Wink. Haha. Wink….return serve.
Some of our stock is not bar-coded, so you have to learn the abbreviations to put in the register. For instance, a short vase of roses would be SVR. Do you think you could learn that? Yes. It can be kind of confusing. For who?
You’ve had a few jobs over the last ten years. That’s a red flag for us. Well, two of those stores closed. (And if either of them were still open, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you.)
The interrogation lasted thirty minutes, with the owner and manager taking notes on everything I said. At one point, I told them I was from Chicago, which they wrote down on their notepads, as if that had anything to do with selling flowers. Maybe it did. Maybe they wanted their next salesperson to be from Cleveland. Finally, the interview ended and they told me that they had to review their notes over the next few days and would get back to me. Review away.
The day I interviewed was in the low 100’s – a real scorcher. When I went into the shop, the metal doorknob was so hot, it burnt my hand. Sometimes, messages from God are sort of vague, which makes them easy to ignore. Not this time.