Photos: My Golden Era of Employment

Up until this past Sunday, April 2, I had literally no clue in the world what I was going to write my follow-up to Cutesville Connections: The Downtown Diner on. In one weeks’ time, that post has gone on to become my most viewed ever! The success there was unprecedented and I’m beyond thankful for all the positivity it has brought to all parties involved. I’ve learned to not be a hit chaser, so I felt no newfound pressure to try and top that success, but still, I had to eventually follow it up with something, but what was that going to be? Well, I ended up finding my inspiration in the most obvious and yet unsuspecting of places.

Melissa, Nancy, and I were at Guido’s Pizzeria and Tapas on The Hill for lunch Sunday with our near and dear friends, Katie, Jon, and their nearly four year old daughter, Pryncess, oops, I mean Paige. Pryncess was the name I suggested they name her prior to her birth and for the record, the only reason they didn’t go with my spectacular suggestion is because neither Katie nor Jon liked it, otherwise I’m sure that totally would’ve been it. The six of us had just had the most lovely day exploring the Missouri Botanical Gardens, but were thrilled to be having some delicious lunch after all that walking and photographing.

Well, as we sat there waiting on our food, I noticed Pryncess was on Katie’s phone, so I asked what game she was playing and Katie said she wasn’t, she was just looking at her pictures and sure enough, Pryncess was just scrolling through Katie’s Photos looking at all the different ones from years past. Now this is obviously something I can appreciate because I love looking at my old photos! Snapchat does me a solid every single day by showing me old memories from years past and I love it so much, but now I’ve noticed my phone does it quite often too, I just can’t get enough! Keep the memories alive I say! So as I sat there and smiled about how awesome it was that Pryncess was just so content with looking at old photos, I thought to myself, this is it! This is how I’ll write my next post!

When I got home that evening I searched in my Camera Roll “April 2” and all the photos I’ve ever taken on any April 2 in any year came up. It was a lowkey day for me all in all, not many results populated, but I realized, I wasn’t going to be posting the post on the 2nd, so I searched “April 3” instead. Some phenomenal photos that were coincidentally taken at the Missouri Botanical Gardens instantly popped up from my trip last year with a former friend and they definitely made me feel nostalgic for the better days of that friendship, but amongst them from eight years back was another photo and I knew this one was where my next post lied.

I figured the actual posting date would end up being April 4, (turns out I was even wrong about that as today is now the fifth, but whatever at this point) so I searched that day and found further inspiration from the same year. April 4, 2015 was my final day at Macy’s Mission Viejo, I had been promoted to another Macy’s store in Escondido, which was fairly closer to my home in Temecula. I should note all three cities are in Southern California. At the time I was beyond thrilled for this new opportunity, but of course being the sentimental person I am, I was sad to be leaving all the incredible friends I’d made over my ten plus months there.

The nearly five years I worked for Macy’s were literally some of the best for me professionally and personally. I absolutely loved my time at Macy’s St. Clair Square in Fairview Heights, Illinois and have as many friendships as I do memories from that era. When I transferred out to the store in Mission Viejo, California I found myself in the most blissful professional period of my life. All ten months there were just about perfect! I think that euphoric high I was on there is why I naively believed the Escondido opportunity would be just as wonderful and while it most definitely was not and I ultimately left the company as a result of it, I did walk away from there with several of the best friendships I’ve ever known, so nonetheless, just like Rihanna, I too found love in a hopeless place.

Anyway, I digress, this post is neither about the former Macy’s nor the latter, but the one right in the middle, Macy’s Mission Viejo where I worked from late May 2014 into very early April 2015. Now let me tell you, I knew I was loving it while I was living it, so that I feel is an obvious plus, but in retrospect, it was quite literally the golden era of employment in my life, thus far anyway as I’ve never loved a work environment as much as I did that one!

The store itself was like a retail palace, I mean, this Macy’s was HUGE! Two buildings, a women’s and a men’s, each three floors tall and I was the Sales Executive of the entire first floor of that spacious men’s building. I had all of men’s clothing except formalwear, shoes, and undergarments. With so much vast space, we didn’t have overflowing stockrooms, nor an overly stuffed salesfloor. It was open and extraordinarily well kept, but that’s primarily due to the incredible team I had there, honestly, these people are simply the best!

Notice my use of the present tense, these people are simply the best, because so many of them are still so very prominent in my life. I moved from California to Cutesville in June of 2017, but have returned several times since and each time I do, a number of my old team and I always get together and have the most magical experiences with one another.

I owe so much of that magic to Sepideh, she is the foundation of our group and anytime I know I’m coming back, she always gets the gang back together. She finds us the most perfect places to go and reaches out to everyone to make it happen. I really cannot thank her enough for keeping the group together like she does. She also shared with me one of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever heard and blessed me with approval to share it in my Britney Spears Is Someone ALWAYS Worth Celebrating post. Seriously, if you haven’t read this poignant and personal story tucked into the tailend of that blog, then I implore you to do so. You’ll be so thankful you did.

Irma, Princess Leticia (not to be confused with Pryncess who is a child, not a title), and Julie are three of the hardest working and most outstanding people I’ve ever known! I cannot even begin to tell you how extraordinarily hard these three worked at that store. The team as a whole was a well oiled machine, but so much of that is because of the leadership qualities the three of them demonstrated everyday. With them there, I never had to worry about anything. Now all these years later, our friendships are stronger than yesterday and I genuinely countdown the days till I know I’m seeing them again. Laughter and love echos each visit and I can’t imagine it any other way.

Nick, Saara, Anita, and I still, more or less, have a group chat going. Although not as often used as in the past, we still share new messages when something super important happens, like the debut of the latest trailer for the live-action The Little Mermaid. These were my first friends at that store and it came to be because we all had Disneyland Resort Annual Passes. One of the best moments of my entire life was getting to go to Club 33 in Disneyland with these three (and Michael, who I’ll mention here next). Club 33 is not open to the public and is only available to its members, which thank goodness to all us, Anita was seeing someone who was. Because I love all things Disney, this was definitely a top ten moment in life for me and I couldn’t have experienced it with a greater group!

Michael, as many of you may know, was one of the groomsmen in my wedding. I love this man with every beat of my heart and he is without doubt one of the best friends anyone could ever hope to have. Our time working together wasn’t always picture perfect though, Michael would often get frustrated with me because I always made him fold tables and put the clothes back and basically prohibited him from ringing on the register, but that’s merely because he wasn’t as skilled as Sean, who he seemed to always be paired up with. This boy Sean would open like a half dozen or more new credit card accounts a day and that metric was such an important one to Macy’s (and my scorecard), so I wasn’t about to let Sean do anything he didn’t want to, he alone was responsible for more than half of all the new accounts our team was opening! If Sean just wanted to stand there behind and register and cashier, then that’s exactly what I was going to let him do, regardless of Michael’s take on the situation. I had to do what was best for the team and obviously I made the right call because we ranked #1 in our store (out of 15 teams) and #2 in the entire district (out of easily over 100 teams)! So thank you Michael for always folding all those clothes and putting everything back where it belonged, so Sean could stand at the register and ring it all out to all those marines who came in shopping from Camp Pendleton. It was your success that made Sean so successful that in return made me and our team so successful, so thank you for being our foundation and backbone.

Michael’s now girlfriend, Jenna, is literally one in a billion. When we worked together they weren’t together, but I had the privilege of seeing the two of them go from coworkers to companions and it’s a journey I’m so thankful to have been apart of. Unlike Michael, Jenna didn’t like to ring, so she was content doing what Michael did and did so without the sometimes complaints and comparisons to her peers that others would on occasion make. Jenna was literally the team favorite, everyone loved her. The aforementioned Sean had a not-so-secret crust on her, which may or may not of contributed to Michael’s jealousy of Sean’s special treatment from his manager, which again was me. Obviously Michael too had a crush on her and they eventually got together, but past all that, everyone on the team respected her despite her young age because she was and is wise beyond her years. You can literally always have the best conversations with Jenna about anything in the world, doesn’t matter what, she is always dependable to deliver the best perspective and that amazing characteristic has only been magnified over the years. Also, one time Melissa came to visit me in California and had to come to work with me at the store and Jenna brought Melissa a Valentine’s Day card (it was applicable, it was February) and Melissa and I will always remember that simple, but kind gesture. It was so thoughtful and sincere and is one of a million examples of Jenna’s heart of gold.

The other managers there were all just the best as well. Jim and Lauren had the third and second floors of the men’s building respectively and they were the best peers. The three of us got along so incredibly well and were always there for one another, this made life so much easier considering there were only three of us in the men’s building, but the women’s building (which granted was bigger in scale) had twelve. Roxana, Sommer, Jackie, and Shahriar, were all my lunch buddies and we would always be syncing up our times, so we could go enjoy Nordy’s (not sure what the restaurant in Nordstrom is actually called, but this is what we always called it) and The Cheesecake Factory together. There was another place we’d go to often too, Fudrockers or something like that, I can’t remember the name now, but it was like burgers and fries and lowkey obnoxious af, but we loved it. Those were the best lunches. Christina, the store assistant manager, was totally cool as a person, but she lowkey cared way too much about the job for my tastes. The store manager though, Michael, was super cool and awesome and a terrific person to work for. Definitely fostered a phenomenal work environment.

So many other people from there have left such an indelible impact on my life too. There was my Polo Ralph Lauren Specialist, Maryam, she was always putting things on hold for me and made sure I was looking my best. So much of my wardrobe now is because of her then. My California Brother, Shane, who I had the privilege of working together at two of my jobs in California, this one and then later at my first Enterprise Rent-A-Car branch in Temecula. Shane is one of the kindest and nicest people I’ve ever known and was always a genuine joy to be around. Sweet Arasto, this Persian boy who had only lived in America for a couple years. He wasn’t the best at anything, but always gave his best at everything and for that he was my secret favorite. I just loved that kid and thought the world of him. Jane, my Levi’s Specialist, which kept the department looking perfect, always. Corrin, who did the same thing over in the Young Men’s Action Sports world. She was in a league of her own in retail merchandising. Gisoo, who was so soft spoken, but worked so incredibly hard. Leila, who worked sparingly, but made such an awesome impact when she was there. Anna, who was from Poland, had this amazing accent and was just hilarious and awesome in every sense of the words. I always had the best conversations with her. Linda, who worked upstairs in furniture, was absolutely outstanding. The offices were on the third floor, so I’d see her quite often when I was going to and from and she was another one I could spend days talking to. Another Linda, who worked in the men’s shoes department, became extraordinary friends with me and our other friend, Amanda, at the time and the three of us created countless memories at Disneyland together.

Then there is my near and dear friend, Amanda, who I became friends with because of a nasty customer who wanted to fight and argue with Amanda about something nonsensical and I happened to be the manager on duty, so Amanda called me up to speak with the customer and we shot this crazy lady down together. It was a wonderful moment that I’ll never forget and from the ashes of that ridiculousness rose a forever friendship that is honestly simply the best. Amanda and I talk on the phone at least once a week and it’s always the best food for my soul to share and hear everything going on in each of our lives. If that lady hadn’t created such a commotion, Amanda and I might not have what we have, so I’ll forever be thankful to her, regardless of how wrong she was in the situation, she was right for making us friends.

So again, thank you Pryncess for simply just looking through your mom’s camera roll that afternoon. I don’t think I would’ve taken this trip down memory lane otherwise, but I’m beyond thankful I have and I owe it all to you. With over 22,000 photos in my Camera Roll, this may certainly become an ongoing series here on my blog. What excites me most about all these memories though is my absolutely firm belief that many of my greatest moments have yet to be lived and I cannot wait to see what lies on the horizon. With hope, so many of those perfect moments from the past will include so many of these perfect people in the future and that might be the most wonderful thing of all.

As always, THANK YOU so much for viewing! I appreciate you greatly! Please feel free to leave me a comment below as I LOVE reading and responding to them! I’ll return next week with another all-new post, so until then, I wish you all, all the best!