My dear Mister Singing Club

01/03/2018 Our first day at the secondhand store was on the agenda today. Since I was able to start at 7:30, I had to get up pretty early...sounds familiar to me. I have to admit: I'm not a morning person - someone else can do that. But maybe I'll get used to it in the next few weeks, because I have to be at work at 7:30 a.m. from Monday to Friday. Patrick started the day a little later, he had to start work at 10:00 and will be working in shifts, including weekends. Our supervisor was so kind and scheduled his shifts completely opposite to mine. So that we won't have any day off together. No problem, we already have a thousand friends here with whom we can spend our days off.

But now back to the 1st working day: After Patrick dropped me off at work, I reported to my supervisor. She took me to the Jumpstart room, where I was allowed to watch a video first, which informed me about my oh so responsible task. This task consisted of hanging clothes on hangers in the production area and assigning them to the respective clothes rack. In other words, men's and children's clothes on one clothes rack and women's clothes on another. After the video, I was supposed to report to Donna, she gave me a task that I performed for about 10 minutes and then it was off to production. I had a 10-minute introduction to my area of responsibility and then I was supposed to get to work. It wasn't rocket science, because I know how to hang things up, thanks to a walk-in closet in my own four walls (Berlin). After less than half an hour, I got the hang of it and thought to myself...oh dear - how am I going to endure this one-sided work for 3 months? After all, I was used to structuring my workday and thinking about my next steps. Here, I only had to think about whether the pants I was holding were 'masculine' or 'feminine' and whether I would soon need a new clothes rack or hanger. Besides the boredom that set in, my back also started to complain after a short time, signaling to me that standing permanently is not its favorite activity. Well, that could be fun for the next three months. For the next few hours, I was busy hanging up clothes...after we were done and all the available clothes were hung up, I was allowed to learn a new area of responsibility - 'rolling' - which means distributing the hung up clothes (with price tags) in the store. Before that, Daneka (future supervisor) showed me the sales floor and explained how and where the items should be sorted. Since I had already shopped in the store before, I already had a rough idea of where each item belongs. Finally, I was allowed to walk and use my brain, because after all, I had to hang the items in the right place. However, I didn't have much time to delve into 'rolling' intensively - because after about 1 hour on the sales floor, my eight-hour shift ended - FINALLY...

Perspective change: My day went a little differently. After I had taken Bella to work with Jim-Bob, I drove back to our Airbnb, where there were still many of our things lying around (we had already unloaded some of them the day before). From today on, we had our room in the shared apartment. After the rest was stowed away, I drove from the old to the new apartment around 8:30, where I unloaded all the suitcases, bags, and other stuff. Fortunately, we had already brought our mattress to the new place the night before, so we didn't have to move that too. I even had enough time to make myself a coffee. I just can't go without it. Around 9:30, I drove to work with Dicken to start my first shift. I was given steel-toed shoes, a fancy green sweater, and an even fancier green safety vest. After changing clothes, I was accompanied to the donation center. There I was introduced to Cindy, also working in the donation center. After a brief introduction ('Hi. I am Patrick. Nice to meet you.'), my area of responsibility was explained to me in the finest 'I-speak-very-softly-and-especially-fast-gum-chewing' English. This consists of accepting donations from all and sundry and then stacking them properly on different carts depending on their nature. There are three categories: 'clothes/shoes/bedding', 'books/DVDs/CDs/vinyl', and 'miscellaneous'. Furniture, on the other hand, is not stacked on carts but placed in a separate area, priced, and maneuvered into the store. Anything that is unusable and/or broken or simply smells strange is promptly thrown into the scrap press. If a cart is full, it is weighed, a few notes are made, and it is either stored in the donation center or sent directly to production. That's where Bella and the others are waiting, basically. So far, so simple. During the following hours, more colleagues from the donation center arrived, whom I then had the pleasure of getting to know. Among them was Kenny, a small, slightly stocky man in his early to mid-40s, from the USA, originally from Italy, who, as it turned out, would be my supervisor. What did I notice on my first day of work? I hadn't signed a contract of employment, so I wasn't sure about the conditions I would be working under. Nor had I received a card to log in and out of the system (important for recording working hours). However, it was all the more important to the supervisors (those who are above Kenny) that I take my breaks. After the first two hours, you are entitled to a 15-minute break. After another two hours, a lunch break (30 minutes), and another two hours later, a 15-minute break. So, Canadians can take breaks. Since I had the privilege of only working 6 hours on my first day, the last break was obviously canceled. But that was bearable because I finished at the same time as Bella. We drove home with Dicken and reflected on our day...