September 23, 2012

• A Change in Things

  I quit my job at the YMCA on Friday night. The last night I worked with my manager was on Thursday and he was sad to see me go. Honestly, I’m also a bit sad that I’m leaving, but greater things are ahead of me.

  I got a new job at Cokesbury at United Theological Seminary. Cokesbury, if you are wondering, is a Christian bookstore. I think that ultimately, it will be a better environment for me. 

  At the YMCA, I was a part-time janitor. It was basically a job I took to help pay the bills. It was in an urban setting, which was great because it allowed me to interact with a lot of people from different cultures, which is something that I was rarely able to do growing up in a small town. Overall though, the job wasn’t great. I loved the people I worked with. I loved the members. The management, however, was terrible. Particularly, my manager. He’s a good guy and everything, but he was more of a buddy and less of a boss. Things would happen that he’d let slide that he shouldn’t have let slide. The full-time janitor who worked mornings (I worked nights) would rarely do his job, so I’d have to clean up the mess that he was supposed to clean up. He’d spend his days hiding in the basement, working out in the gym, or playing basketball. My manager knew this, but he’d always make excuses for him, as if I didn’t know that he was really screwing around. In reality, most nights, I would get 8 hours of work done in 3-4 hours.

  This is pretty much how I feel when I walk into work.

  Despite that, I am sad to leave. I hate saying goodbye, so I decided that I will be getting a membership and visit about once a week. There is a YMCA closer to where I live, so I will go to that one to do most of my working out.

  This new job at Cokesbury is going to be exciting, though. It pays slightly better, I have more hours, the hours I work are in the middle of the day, and it’s a more logical place for me to be in this stage in my life. I am really not too excited about doing sales again, but it’s going to be much better than cleaning up after everyone else. Working in a bookstore just seems right for me right now. My goal is to teach religion and theology in a higher education setting, and where better to start than at a bookstore in a seminary? This will not only help expand my mind, but will help with networking.

  
  I imagine I will be buying a lot of books with my 30% discount.

  So, I guess I’m excited for this new phase in my life. This is going to be a good thing for me, I think

  • 9:10 pm
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