Adding a New Chapter When You're Older

Adding a New Chapter When You're Older

We all go through change. It’s inevitable. No one experiences a life of no change. This past week I realized that it was time for a change, and because change needed to occur, and because I wanted to have control over that change, I went about doing my best to create it by applying for jobs all over town. Yes, that’s right, the change that I needed to have happen was an increase in base income. Now don’t get me wrong, our household income has been pretty good for years. We can pay all of our bills, make our rent payments on time, and even go to a movie from time to time. But the place that we couldn’t focus our money was in our savings account. Yup, the time had come to begin padding that monster.

Now, I’m not as young as I used to be, and to make things worse, I’ve worked for myself for over eight years. As most people do, I looked at the worse case scenario and pictured that no one would contact me. No one. But because I’m a positive person, I decided to canvas my area with job applications. Eight years ago, when I was working for someone else, applications were submitted at the business. Now, things are different. I can sit at home and apply for jobs all over town. I can see who’s hiring without even walking out the front door. So I did both. I applied for five jobs and guess what? I got phone calls back from four of them asking me to come in for an interview. I was curious about the fifth one because it was, actually, the one I was hoping to get the most. It was the movie theatre down the road. Cinemark. I went it to follow-up on the application. I went to the cashier and told her that I was here to follow-up on an application. She got on her radio and started talking in low tones and actually walked away from me, only looking back from time to time as she spoke. After several minutes, she said, “Someone will be with you in a minute.” I felt odd about the fact that the cashier, even though she had nothing else to do, continued to stay out of sight. The woman that came out was probably in her twenties. She walked straight up to me and said that she had gone through my application and I seemed to be overqualified. I told her that I just needed a steady paycheck and had always wanted to work there. She then told me that she couldn’t give me enough hours. It suddenly seemed to me that she was coming up with excuses, and I had to wonder if it was because I wasn’t the median age (about 22) of the others working there. When she told me that I wasn’t a good fit, I pretty much knew that was the case, even though she said that she would keep my application for a year. (Wondering to myself how I would be less qualified in a year, lol.) Oddly enough, Target had just offered me a job as an over-qualified cashier, and Old Navy asked me to be an over qualified sales person. So, a little grumpy, I left but knew that something better would come up.

Sure enough, I ended up getting a really cool position with, of all people, Macy’s. So, it worked out for the best. But still, the fact that someone didn’t want me to work for them because of my age was a little off-putting. I’ll still take my family there, but not cool Cinemark.

So, my change is underway. Monday I go in for training. Looking forward to see how this will help my writing, and I know that it will. The main point being, don’t let anything dissuade you from making a change or reaching a goal when you know that it’s the thing to do. In the meantime, perhaps I’ll see you at Macy’s!