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I found myself waiting inside of a fancy waiting room with plush brown couches and leather armchairs for one of the first of many interviews that I would have this summer. I held on to my resume and pulled my skirt down a little to look a little more professional.
“We’ll be with you in a moment Jasmine,” a small lady said hiding behind her massive desk. “The store manager said that she would be up in a moment.”
“Okay, thank you,” I responded.
I waited there for a about fifteen more minutes before a very tall woman with her hair slicked back tightly into a bun emerged and called me into the conference room. We exchanged greetings and then dove right into the interview.
I knew retail like the back of my hand. Every store was almost exactly the same so I wasn’t worried about nabbing the sales associate position in maybe the women’s clothing department or something. I answered the typical retail questions like a champ and really won her over until she took a better look at my resume.
“Umm, it looks here like you moved around a bit and had quite a few positions,” she looked up at me with her eyebrow raised. “Would you be able to stay here for an extent amount of time?”
I paused for a moment and realized that she was referring to the multiple retail positions that I’ve gotten and then quit a month or so later. I’ve literally only been at my longest retail job for two months before I moved on to another location. I was a little schizo to be honest when it came to sticking with jobs that didn’t involve writing, and I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to hire me for the position.
“I was thinking about placing you in the cosmetics department if I hired you on. Does that sound like something that you would want to do?”
I stared at her for a full twenty seconds. “Umm, I’m not really good with makeup and all that. I don’t know—I mean I barely figured out how to put on mascara a few years ago—I…”
I just kept rambling until she cut me off.
“Well there’s more to the position than makeup. There are also skin care products like lotions and moisturizers and such. It’s more about speaking with the customer and finding out what they need in order to help them purchase the product.”
I’m sure I looked incredibly confused when I tried to respond, but I was completely caught off guard with the cosmetics counter suggestion. We finished the interview on a very awkward note that involved a lot more staring, and glancing down at my terribly decorated list of retail positions, and I left knowing that I probably didn’t get the job.
That was one interview down. There’s probably a billion more to go.
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