It’s been waaay too long since I’ve posted anything, so I thought I’d ease back into it with a brief reflection.
I remember back in 2006 when I was fresh out of college and scrambling to find a job before my 6 month grace period for student loans ended. I had started out working at Scotts Lawn Care, which I promptly quit after fainting in a customer backyard due to the 105 degree weather. Then I applied at every place I could possibly think of. Anything that paid I’d do in order to just get on my feet, and buy me time as I tried to start my own eCommerce business. Ultimately I was hired as a security guard at Target. A job I was very much not looking forward to having to do.
Then I was hit with a stroke of good fortune, my cousin offered me a job the night before my first day at Target. It was to pack boxes and manually copy and paste the tracking numbers from the tracking emails into the orders so the customers at RosenberryRooms.com would get ship notification emails. The responsibilities piled up quickly after that. At the time the company was 4-5 people in my cousin’s attic, and it was awesome.
When I think back on that period and the following years I remember coming to work every day being amazed that this could be called a job and I could do this for a living. I assumed all jobs were dreary, had a strict dress code or humiliating uniform, and were filled with awkwardness mixed with completely inappropriate behavior. That had been my experience with all prior jobs. I remember as the company grew and my responsibilities within it did too, that this feeling that I was getting away with something I wasn’t supposed to never left me.
The reason I’m reflecting on this randomly is that I still feel like I’m getting away with something today. Shouldn’t I be in an ill-fitting suit reciting the corporate values of my overlords somewhere in an endless cube farm while being harassed over the new format of the TPS reports?? How have I lucked out and been able to work in awesome small businesses where most people are kind, rational, and don’t waste each other’s time on meaningless stuff?!
I also got to spend the last two evenings at different eCommerce meetups since there’s a conference in town and talking to these small business owners and employees always gets me pumped up about what we’re all doing. I always want to grab people and say “Can you believe we get to do this?!” but I’m 6’3″ and 220 pounds so they’d probably call the cops if I did.
Anyways, today I have no coherent point, except maybe that I’m grateful that on that fateful evening I was pulled from what could have possibly been the beginning of my climbing of the corporate ladder at Target, and thrown into a small/mid-size eCommerce career, which has been incredibly rewarding and enjoyable, even when terrifying. I can’t believe we get to do this! Can you?
