I started work at Barnes & Noble today with my orientation. Mostly it's pretty standard corporate stuff: daydreaming on company time is stealing, don't harass your co-workers, we have an open door policy/you can bring anything up, blah blah blah. I haven't worked retail before, and I haven't ever worked wage-slave for a private company larger than a mom & pop. So some of the stuff seems dumb but expected. No fancy scheduling software; schedules are made by hand. I will be working in two different departments, so I have to request my time off in two different places. Hopefully they won't schedule me to work in both at the same time. Training is much more organized than I am used to. It's kind of overkill for me, as it doesn't take anywhere near the repetition or amount of time allocated for it. But after working in the haphazard software industry, where training and procedures are touted but rarely used, I find this really refreshing. Plus, it just means I look that much better by not needing all the rigmarole to get good.
I'm starting off in receiving, which, unlike bookselling, doesn't have a changing schedule. So from 7 to 11 a.m. I'll be working in receiving. They haven't figured out how many days I'll be working from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. but during that time I'll be doing bookselling, cashiering, or other things. I did tell them I wasn't interested in working in the coffee shop, and I don't think they'll have me doing time there.
Benefits mostly suck. But then, I'm not working there for the money or benefits. The employee discount is 30% on books, with various other percentages on other items. Plus, I wasn't aware the Barnes & Noble owned EBGames and Gamestop, and I get discounts there too. I can borrow any hard-cover to take home for reading free for a couple of weeks, but not paperbacks.
Tomorrow I train on receiving.
Wheee!
It's also kind of nice to be in a job that I can write about. Not that any of this crap is important, but a lot of the stuff working at Expedia I either had to filter to certain people, censor, or just plain write vaguely. This job is only rarely going to have anything I need to be secretive about. Gonna suck for you guys reading the mundane.