With the Halloween season luckily back in full swing, I can’t help but think of my time working at a Halloween Store. It was my first job, and I ended up working there for two seasons, each of which lasted from July to late October, early November. The reason work started in July was because we needed to start setting up the store that early. And while there are so many jokes about Halloween stores popping up moments after another store shuts its doors, our set-up was actually quite egregious. I remember it taking about three weeks, and we wouldn’t even have the entirety of our shipments by then.Â
But set-up was the least of my worries. As chaotic as it could get, the worst story I have from it was that one time I had to drive out to another store 20 minutes away to help, and I didn’t get paid because I forgot to clock in, but nobody could be bothered to fix it. So, most of my horror stories come from the general season. For my first year, I was 16 and quite caught up over my extremely teenage summer of embarrassing the hell out of myself, so my naivete played into my work experience a bit. Therefore, when I was first onboarded and then immediately introduced to a slew of odd little tidbits of information, I was sort of dumbfounded. Right off the bat, a week or so into my employment, our store manager had been fired. Basically, he would come into work drunk, which of course isn’t all that appreciated. Honestly, knowing the backstory and what he was going through at the time, I can’t hold grudges. Nonetheless, it was still rather insane to walk into. But the store had to move forward, so we got a new store manager soon after. This is where the store really began turning into an utter mess. There was not a single way under the sun that this new person was fit to be in a managerial position. Every time anyone turned around, they were throwing a tantrum or pouting about something extremely minimal. Nothing they did was professional or articulated well, and it drove most employees insane. But still, a good portion of coworkers didn’t find much fault in our manager’s behavior, and somehow the store divided, causing everything to become far too cliquey. The coworkers who “sided” with our manager were pretty weird anyway; They also weren’t as professional as they should’ve been. Far too many side eyes and immaturity came from these people, and I remember them acting superior just because they had worked at the store before. Sometime in October, one of these employees had her friend apply, and the friend started working with us. Eventually, not much later, I felt like this girl was acting a bit flirty with me. I wasn’t too opposed, but I knew she was 20-something and I was, of course, 16. Luckily, I knew better and wasn’t about to pursue anything knowing the age gap was…weird! I gave her the benefit of the doubt though because most of my coworkers had assumed I was 20 upon first meeting, so I figured she had thought similarly. Turns out, at some point, one of my other coworkers who was becoming a friend of mine had told this girl I was 16. Since I wasn’t there, I obviously can’t vouch for this, but the idea that that conversation went down, and she still acted like that towards me anyway was insane. Either way, she was just as odd as the half of our coworkers who were buddy-buddy with our crazy manager, so I knew to stay away from her.
Despite all this, the thing that made working there rewarding was that throughout all the disturbance, a few of my coworkers and I had become friends. This was mostly due to our shared annoyance with the way our store was being run, but we also all had pretty common interests, more or less. So, after November when the store had closed, these coworkers and I remained friends and often hung out together. There wasn’t too much to worry about, we all seemed to mesh well and had fun together. Therefore, by the time it was time to apply to the store again, we all figured why not give it another go. We had built our own little community there, and the insane manager had been dealt with and was unlikely to return. July came around and we were back at the same store, this time expecting everything would run much smoother. And for the most part, it did. The store took on a much more carefree vibe, but not in a way that felt ignorant to the fact that we were still working a job. Our new manager was someone who had worked with us the year prior as an assistant manager, and we knew she was going to be reliable, which proved true in the long run.
Just a couple of weeks later one of my coworker-friends casually called me a slur. I was obviously pretty disconcerted, but something in me made me go completely silent until everyone in the room could tell I was thrown off. When I made a point of arguing against her usage of the word, she brushed it off saying it wasn’t that serious and she could say it, which she very much could not. For the next couple of weeks, I ignored my distress about it, trying to refrain from making it too big of a deal. But clearly, this girl must’ve been insane because sometime after that, she again called me the same thing. I don’t know what she thought she was achieving, but this time around, I was remarkably pissed. I knew, from being her friend, that she was often in over her head and incredibly stubborn. Because of this, I needed her to know how messed up her actions were, so I reprimanded her, trying to educate her and get her to hear me out. She was so unbelievably stubborn, though, that she didn’t want to hear anything I said. Consequently, I drove the 10 minutes to work and clocked in so I could make the call to corporate to report her. After trying to talk to her, I felt this was my only option. Some of my other coworker-friends saw me walk in with a seething look on my face, and obviously, someone must’ve told my manager I was there. I talked to her and debriefed the situation and because she knew the way this coworker was, she was incredibly irritated too. So, we made a plan that there would be a discussion between my coworker, my manager, our district manager, and me. She also said she was going to make sure my coworker “friend” apologized, which she didn’t do for quite some time, and when she finally did, it felt so superficial it was almost funny. I knew better than to try and get back to being good friends with this girl. She was so ridiculous and rude to me, and I just wanted to get through the season without any more complications.
Due to this, the season continued with more unsettlement than I would have liked. The rest of our friends were clearly a bit annoyed with the situation, and later I would realize that it was more so annoyance at me. Once October hit, I was getting more serious about applying to college, and I knew that with work, school, application season, and friends and family, I just couldn’t balance it all at once without driving myself insane. I was luckily in a spot where I decided it would be best to put in my 2 weeks’ notice, and I told some of my friends about this. The season would end in about a month, so my friends thought I was doing something pointless, though I knew deep down it would be best for me. I assume their distaste for my quitting is what drove them to start ignoring me and leaving me out of group events. They would plan stuff with no warning and put in zero effort to ask me about hanging out with them. Because I was shut out so quickly, I got confused and reasonably upset about it, so I said something. And the way they all reacted was so unbelievably ignorant and dramatic that I knew better than to salvage any of it. Perhaps I was a bit overdramatic at some points, but I can acknowledge that, something I know they probably never could.
In the end, I forgot about them all rather quickly and filed it away as just some lore of mine. I’m glad I can look at it that way and not be so disheartened by it, because I know it shows growth and maturity. Especially knowing how headstrong they were and the stress that put me under, I acknowledge the way I look back on it and I’m glad I got out of it, as messy as it was made to be. Now, I’d much rather stay away from them and let myself do what I have to do, but when I went back home recently, I went into the store just for a bit of fun, but frankly, I did want to see who was still working there. There were plenty of coworkers who never caused me or anyone else any trouble, and then those aforementioned coworkers who ran like a clique under the rule of the four-month-long job they had. When I got there, I saw my manager was still there, and after making a few nonchalant laps around the store, I went up to her to say hello and ask who was on the current employee roster. No answer could’ve been as hilarious as when she said that those previous employees were blacklisted. I can’t even say I’m surprised, but it was far too perfect and I’m honestly so glad it happened. Knowing them, they probably all brushed it off and acted like they weren’t bothered, but the fact of the matter is that they have that against them for the rest of their life. That being said, afterward, I did some tame Instagram research and learned that one coworker is dating another coworker’s brother, and all of them are still friends. Dating your friend’s brother is by no means illegal, but it adds to the messy lore, making everything a bit more humorous. I guess at the end of the day, they won’t ever want to consider their faults, but the karma of being blacklisted sounds pretty good to me, and that’s a win in my eyes.