Leave Your Ego At The Door

It’s been a long road for me since returning back to the states from Japan. Today marks the 9th day of me being employed after being without a job for 2 years. The job is not my natural job of choice but it is a job.  And after 2 years of searching one becomes very eager to just do anything to stay sane.  I have taken many government standardized  tests for jobs that just never came.  I did well on the tests but with the government shrinking, the jobs that were open just became jobs that aren’t even jobs anymore.

I am over that.  I need to just press on and hope for the best to come in the following years.  Why not?  I can’t do anything about the past now.  What I can do is my best in my current position and possibly taking advantage of being in the government system(GS) now.

So what is my job?  Don’t laugh but I am a cashier at the grocery store on the military base here.  Well, my title is store associate.  Whatever that means.  It basically is a glorified term for worker bee.  Don’t get me wrong, I am happy to be working.  It’s just not the National Security type job I was hoping to have at this point.  You know I have a Master’s degree in the subject matter.

So what about my title of this post?  Well, it is something I have to say to myself everyday before walking in the door at work.  Believe me, I wish I didn’t have to.  But I feel it is something I need to do in order to make new friends and get through the day without seeming like an A-Hole.  I have been in some kind of supervisory or management position in everything I have done professionally.  To be just the worker bee now, is tough to accept.

I know I can be abrasive at times and come off as a know-it-all in things that I am familiar with (which is just about everything.  See, I am an A-hole!).  This was tough during my training for this new job.  I needed to keep quiet and just soak in what people told me.  I guess they thought I was some kind of prodigy and only trained for 2 days before I  got my own money drawer and thrown to the wolves.  No big deal, I’m a people person.  If I mess up, I just use my charm to calm the situation and make the customer think everything is good.  It’s like a magic trick.  You saw me screw up and now you see a bunny. 🙂

I have also learned some great tips for those of you that do your own grocery shopping.  Probably the most important is to generously tip your bagger monetarily.  Why?  Well if you don’t, your eggs will end up crushed under the jug of bleach  and your potato chips will turn to dust.  And if you use coupons, don’t come to my lane, I will just throw that ish out.  Oh yeah, and if you’re grumpy and you don’t say hi to me after my cheery and gleeful greeting, you just might end up with a $20 roll of toilet paper charged on your receipt.  Wipe your butt with that you cranky sour apple!

But seriously, if there is anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot immediately!