Zia Thornhill

Within all of my working years (only three), I have worked at one place. A small consignment store in Lawrenceville, Georgia, called Once Upon a Child. Throughout the three years I worked at Once Upon a Child, I made many friends and witnessed employees come and go. I’ve dealt with many different kinds of people, customer conflicts, and work fights. All while trying to save money for college and fun activities on the side.

Before returning to Athens this semester, I worked there in the summer, where I experienced one of the most stressful working weeks of my life. During that week, I encountered many bizarre situations, as a shift lead, such as incompetent employees, numerous customer complaints because a CONSIGNMENT store did not have a certain shoe size, and employees covering people who worked at the same time as them.

However, the most bizarre situation happened after the store was closed. When I was in charge of closing the store, an older, drunk white man came in trying to buy a bouncer so he could “ drink while watching his baby”. My friends (Reign and Jordyn) and I were in shock to hear someone say that to us, but we tried to remain polite. The man offered to do a backdoor transaction and just pay us in cash because the store was closed. After I told him no, he took the bouncer out of the store, placed his newborn baby in it, and began to raise his voice at us to appreciate the cuteness of his child. Many thoughts were going through my head at the time: what if he was going to steal, or worse, hurt us? Still we went along with what he said. But shortly after we got the man to leave, I was able to officially close the store.

After going through that week of odd experiences and having to quit shortly after because I was returning to UGA, it made me never want to work a part-time job again. I also gained even more respect for retail workers and the weird situations they have to deal with.