The End of Hco.

Today, one gate came down on what actually turned out to be a long run for a job out of college. I turned in my store key and manager swipe card, and am no longer the Store Manager for Hollister 107 in Grapevine Mills.

For those of you asking, what now? I do not know. I felt that leaving now was a good decision because the time was right. I'd been with the company 2 years and was a store manager for 1.5 of those in 2 different stores. My Hco, this past weekend, Armageddon Apocalyptic Bonanza aka Tax Free Weekend. Was the biggest money maker of our 3 stores in the mall. Store Manager was as high as I could go. I have no aspirations to be a district manager. I got 2 great references, and am leaving the company in good standing. I don't want to turn this into me bashing A&F, but here are some reasons I'm glad to be leaving...

- Grapevine Mills is a f*cking nuthouse. I'm convinced it is the busiest mall in DFW, not the nicest, the busiest. 

- Half the people who come to GVM can't speak English. Half of those people want to buy half the store to take it back to their Central/ South American country and sell it for one and a half times the price. If you confront one of them about this, the story is the same. "I am taking this back to ______ and giving it to my family." Riiight, your family need 25 pairs of flip flops and five of the EXACT same t-shirt. Please.

- The people who haggle with you over a shirt that cost $9.90 which was found on a $6.90 random table. 1, the shirt was once $33 so either way, $7 or $10, you are getting it for a good deal. 2, if its that big of a deal spending $ extra dollars, maybe you shouldn't be spending your money @ Hollister. 3, if people could return what they don't want to where they found it, or at least give us the stuff they don't want. Maybe this wouldn't happen so much.

- The people who can't figure out which fitting rooms are closed and open. Line extensions that block closed places off, other customers waiting by open fitting rooms standing next to someone twirling a key apparently is not enough.

- Little kids who ride their heelies through the store. I always wanted to hip check one and then yell at them for getting in my way.

- Anybody who has left dirty diapers, tampons, or tried to breast feed one of their 7 children in the fitting room.

- Girls who try on 20 things and only buy 1.

- People who try to do their shopping via phone through me. No, I don't know if we have LAST YEAR's uniform pants. I don't even know what this year's uniform pants are.

I could go on and on. If there is anything I will miss it is the people. I had some great kids over the past couple years. They were on time, worked diligently, funny, and easy to talk to. They bought me a cake for my last day, and I took pictures with some of them. Definitely going to miss that. Also miss how I won't be 'the man' anymore as now I will probably have to start from the bottom... hopefully at a university... but that is for another day.