Working in Albuquerque

My Jobs
I had only done babysitting since Dustin was born in 1980 but when he was six and in first grade I decided it was time to get a job. Since I had worked at two different plant nurseries before Dustin was born I quickly got a job working for a nursery called Green Acres. There were about five different stores but I worked mostly at the one near the corner of Corrales and Highway 528. I worked there off and on, part time in the winter and full time during the spring and summer busy season for about a year. Mostly I did cashiering and cleanup.
Next I got a job as a cashier with Walgreens Pharmacy. I had disliked Green Acres but disliked Walgreens even more and was only there about six months. Being inside a store, tied to a register where you couldn’t leave for any reason got old in a hurry. Soon after I started I saw a hiring ad by J.C. Penney’s call center and quickly applied even though I didn’t figure I had any kind of a chance at the job. What did I know about computers and taking calls for catalog orders? I was to find out real soon.
After three weeks of intensive training at the call center I knew the basics of using a computer, the J.C. Penney’s program for putting customers catalog orders into the computer and was ready to take live calls. That was terrifying but after a couple of days I realized that the customers really couldn’t do anything to me since they were somewhere else at the other end of the phone line and I had really good back up and help from supervisors. A year later I learned how to take orders for Avon Fashions who contracted out to the Penny’s call center to take their calls. It was a lot more interesting than cashiering at Walgreens or even Green Acres had been but still I was inside tied to a telephone and a computer. But the money was better so I stuck with it by telling myself that not only was I earning money I was leaning how to do a lot of things I had never ever considered doing before. After about three years there was a big lay off in the slow season between Christmas and summer and I found myself without a job.
In desperation I took a job cashiering for Furrow’s Building Center a long ways across Albuquerque from our home in Rio Rancho. Again I was learning about a business that I hadn’t really known anything about before. We had shopped at hardware and lumber stores doing all the woodworking we do and doing home improvement projects at home but now I was leaning the true ways the stores worked. I wasn’t impressed. As with all stores it was sell, sell, sell. Make that money any way you can. If the customer says they don’t need an item sell it to them anyway. After a little over two years I couldn’t handle it and the hour long drive to work and another hour back in the evening.
My next job was much closer to home but again I was cashiering. It was for a few months at a Ben Franklin’s crafts store and them a few months at a building center called Home Base. Home Base sat on the same property that Green Acres had been on when I worked there. Shortly after I was laid off by Green Acres the company had gone under, all the stores closing and a Home Base had been build there. The so-called supervisors couldn’t seem to keep the schedule straight for all four of the Barbaras that worked there as cashiers and one by one we left after being chewed out for not being at work for someone else’s shift. The supervisors didn’t seem to realize we each had a different last name. Within a year the Home Base chain of stores would go under as well as the Furrow’s Building Centers. It was strange that everywhere I worked the store went out of business after I was there. The Ben Franklin’s had gone under, too. J.C. Penney’s and Peoples Flower Shop were the only places I had worked for that hadn’t gone out of business so far and this eve included the smaller flower shops and plant nurseries I worked for before we moved to Rio Rancho, a total of nine. There was to be one more.
My next job, starting in 1994, was with Roland’s Nursery. Roland’s had been in business several years and had taken over most of the old Green Acre stores. Again there were five stores in Albuquerque and one in Los Cruces, NM. As before I was hired to be a cashier. As on several other jobs I had to start with no training as to store policies or procedures. It was just get at it and work the register. I was told everything had prices on them but of course they didn’t. And Roland’s hadn’t upgraded to scanners yet. It was the old fashioned way of knowing what the prices were and after a few days I was pretty good at it as I had been at other cashiering jobs. At least here I did make a few friends; sort of. I never did find it easy to make friends. Maybe it was all that moving when I was a kid and having to leave my few friends behind when we moved. On this job I didn’t feel quite as inclosed. Even though the register area was inside the store we had lots of windows and the big glass doors were kept open except when the weather was too bad.
At Roland’s I was finally able to take the New Mexico Nurseryman’s test and get my license as an official nurseryman; for all the good it was to do me. While I was there the store when through a series of head cashier and when there wasn’t an official one I got to take over the job. It was offered to me several times but I didn’t want it. There was too much responsibility especially the money. Under paid cashiers are responsible for all that money that officially belongs to the customers or the store and if even one penny is missing the cashier catches hell and can be fired. No cashier gets paid enough to have to deal with that. I tried to transfer to another department in the store but was always told I was needed most as a cashier. I would have really liked to have worked in the greenhouse with the houseplants, or in the bedding plants, or even roses and shrubs. I didn’t like one of the guys in trees so didn’t want there and I worked the hard goods area quite a bit as it was and didn’t want it. Hard goods were the pots, books, fertilizers, chemicals, and gift items. Cashiers also did most of the orders for sod. We sold tons and tons of sod or rolls of grass to be put down for a lawn. A lot of the sod orders came in over the phone and I was an expert at taking them. I usually knew how many rolls of sod were needed for a lawn off the top of my head as soon as I heard the square footage, and I’m not good at math. Of course all of this work was done standing up. I worked from 9am to 6pm while the store was open and it usually took at least an hour to count out the registers after the doors were locked. Each cash drawer had to have a form filled out for all the cash, credit card receipts and checks as to exact amount. There were times when we couldn’t get them to tally with what the registers said they should come to when we would be there for hours after work. Yes, we got paid for that time but 10 and 12 hour days were common. Then you go yelled at if you went over 40 hours in a week or had to go home early on some days because you were apt to go over 40 hours for the week if you didn’t go home early. And my feet kept getting worse and worse with all that standing. I asked several time for shorter days but was always told I could keep working or quite. Part time wasn’t allowed for me. Just some of the other special people. I had to have bunion surgery but that didn’t seem to get to empress them either. So finally in 1998 I quite.
Within a few months I didn’t have another job. And this time I could sit down. I was back working at a catalog call center. This time for Victoria’s Secret. I would have laughed my head off if anyone had told me when I was in high school or the Navy that eventually I would be working for a company like Victoria’s Secret. But it was a job and a good paying job and I was handling it until Daddy died in December of 1999. I had to take a month off to go to Silver City to take care of the funeral and then Mother, who was sick, before I could get back home and back to work. Even then I think I might could have stuck with this job longer if I hadn’t had a detached retina in my right eye on March 28, 2001. I was off for three months before I was allowed to go back to work since I had to look at a computer every day. From then on I have had sever migraine headaches when I have to use a computer for extended periods of time. A few minutes to an hour but after that my eyes blur and the headaches come on. I have had migraines all my life but they have been worse since the detached retina. In late 2001 my left eye started having problems and my eye doctor had to do laser surgery on it to keep the retina from detaching on it, too. Then in Feb. of 2002 I had to have cataract surgery on my right eye as all the steroids I had to use in it had caused the cataract to grow faster. It was at this time that Victoria’s Secret started threatening to let me go as I was having to many surgeries and having to take off too much time to suit them. In April of 2002 the Alzheimer type problems that my mom had had for years got worse and suddenly my sisters had to make the decision to put her in a nursing home as we couldn’t work and take care of her. Sarah had been trying to do this in Silver City but it was too much for her. I went to Silver to help her get Mother into the home. I was gone for a week but it was the final straw as far as Victoria’s Secret was concerned and I was fired for having to take too much time off for personal reasons.
For the next few months or so I did this and that working for temporary services where you might work a day here or a day there. Not much fun and I didn’t get much work, either. I did get a cashier job with Hobby Lobby for the Christmas season for a few months and then the next summer I got a job with Lowes Building Center for about six months. At Lowes I worked the garden center helping customer and watering plants. It didn’t help that several times a week I had to be there at 6am after a long hours drive to get there.
My last job where I made money was with Intersections, INC. Of course everyone says ‘who are they?’. Intersections, INC. is a call center in Rio Rancho that helps people with their credit reports and identity theft. Boring as all get out but I did learn a lot although it was so boring I have now forgot most of it. I worked their part time four hours a day five days a week. That was because even four hours would cause a lot of migraines.
These are all the jobs I have held that I got a paycheck for but they haven’t been the most important jobs in my life or the ones I ever enjoyed. I have been a wife and mom which I guess have been my most important jobs. But the work I have always enjoyed the most was anything I was doing with animals. I could never imagine not having been able to have my cats, dogs, birds and my horses. My life would be so blank without being allowed to have had pets and being able to do gardening in my yard as well as many, many outings to the desert and mountains to see as much of nature as I could see.