holiday parties and freight elevators

Today is the office holiday party, which has me reminiscing about office holiday parties gone by. There was one place I worked, however, that did not have a holiday party, and that was Old Navy. Now, granted, work in the retail field doesn't immediately scream "holiday party!" or "holiday bonus!" the way that working in some other fields does. And to be fair, if you work retail at a place like Old Navy, you've been listening to holiday music for approximately five months by the time December rolls around, so you're fairly zapped of the Christmas spirit. Also, there were very few people I actually liked at Old Navy; indeed, there were a fair amount that I had to actively avoid, and so I don't know that I really needed an additional event where I might have been forced to make small talk with them. All the same, some snacks in the breakroom or a gift card might have been nice.

I just had a horrible thought that maybe Old Navy did have some sort of holiday party, and they only invited people who opened a certain number of Old Navy credit cards each year. Just thinking about having to ask people to open up an Old Navy credit card gives me the hives. It's a pretty big measure of performance at the ON, even if you're just stocking merchandise, which was my job. A few times I worked the cash register and I had a principle that I wouldn't ask people if they wanted to open one unless they had spent more than $100. I'm not the asshole that asks you if you want a credit card if you buy $10 worth of flip-flops.

The number one question I'm always asked when I tell people I once worked at Old Navy is whether I had to wear a headset. The answer is, you're supposed to wear a headset, but I never did. If you wear a headset, you have a ton of people trying to motivate you to get someone to open up an Old Navy credit card. There are also things like price checks, people announcing that they're going on their break or coming back off their break, and…that's about it, actually. Mystery solved if you were wondering. But as a member of the stock/shipment team, there was one crucial reason to wear a headset.

That crucial reason is today's Picture(s) of the Day.

The freight elevator.

The freight elevator at Old Navy is weird. It was a three-level store, and the elevator would only open on a given floor if someone on that floor pressed the button from the OUTSIDE. So you couldn't get on the elevator on the third floor with a cart of clothes, push a button for the first floor, and expect to go anywhere. Rather, you had to use the walkie talkie to ask someone on the first floor to push the button for you, and then you had to get on the freight elevator before it actually left and hope that everything worked out okay. If the button never got pushed on the first floor, but the elevator moved somehow, then you were stuck on the freight elevator until someone pushed the button to call it to another floor and actually open it. This happened somewhat frequently.

The first time it happened to me I was stuck for 30 minutes and scared shitless. When I finally got off the elevator, the first question I was asked was, "Are you okay?" and the second question was, "why weren't you wearing a headset?" I didn't learn my lesson, though, and kept shirking headset duty, and I got stuck a few more times. As it happened more and more, though, I started to relish it and even enjoy it, because it was a legitimate excuse not to work and at some point the button always got pushed again before the end of the night.

When I went back to Seattle in August, my Old Navy coworker (and friend and Bev Night Buddy) Matthew and I went back to see the ol' freight elevator. My picture reflects the potential terror of getting stuck in the freight elevator, while Matthew's reflects the "I don't give a shit about headsets, and I hope I get stuck in the freight elevator" sorta feeling. Or at least that's my interpretation of it.

Matthew, we totally should have had a holiday party in the stock room. I just thought of it. Dammit.