How I Worked

Employment

When I retired, I dreamed of work­ing half a day, but not doing men­tal work. I even tried to look for a job at an employ­ment agency, but with­out suc­cess. Then, due to my trav­els, that idea fad­ed away.

At the very begin­ning, when I arrived here, I felt like I had a lot of free time. Mark was at school, every­one was at work. Well, I would cook, clean, sit at the com­put­er, read, or work in the back­yard (it was­n’t so hot then), and that was it. I decid­ed to try to find a part-time job, espe­cial­ly since now my Green Card allows me to do so.

Valenti­na called the man­ag­er of Ross, the store where she worked when she first arrived, and asked if they need­ed a work­er who poor­ly under­stands and speaks Eng­lish. It turned out that there is work for every­one at Ross, who­ev­er wants to work. The store man­ag­er said she would hire me; for this, I need­ed to reg­is­ter on the Ross web­site and sub­mit an appli­ca­tion for the posi­tion I was inter­est­ed in. We went to the Ross chain store’s web­site, reg­is­tered as ware­house work­ers, and indi­cat­ed the store address where I want­ed to work. After a while, I received a response email with an auto­mat­ic text like: “Dear Tatyana, we are so glad you decid­ed to join our team. Please fol­low the link to fill out the nec­es­sary addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about your­self for the back­ground check.”

This check is called a “back­ground check”, where infor­ma­tion from pre­vi­ous work­places, crim­i­nal his­to­ry, and edu­ca­tion qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the posi­tion are ver­i­fied in the rel­e­vant data­bas­es. The ver­i­fi­ca­tion can take up to two weeks and lasts longer the high­er the posi­tion the appli­cant is apply­ing for. In my case, it went very quick­ly, and I was sent an offer.

But don’t think that get­ting a job is as easy as in my case.

An offer is a let­ter indi­cat­ing the work loca­tion, con­di­tions of employ­ment: full or part-time, hourly wage or salary, and the date the employ­ee is hired; it is rec­om­mend­ed to con­tact the man­ag­er to clar­i­fy the sched­ule. The employ­ee must accept or decline the offer if some­thing does not suit them. But don’t think that get­ting a job is as easy as in my case. The high­er the posi­tion, the more inter­views you need to pass with dif­fer­ent mem­bers of the com­pa­ny. And the inter­views are not easy, and some­times this peri­od takes a very long time before receiv­ing the offer.

Ross

This is a large dis­count store that sells ware­house left­overs or brand-name goods that have not sold in var­i­ous brand­ed stores. Ross sells cloth­ing, shoes, toys, and home goods. You can find dish­es, pil­lows, rugs, paint­ings, clocks, mir­rors, small fur­ni­ture, and more there. All items are new, but at low­er prices than in brand­ed stores.

I was assigned to work in the ware­house. Work in the ware­house start­ed at 5:15 AM. At this time, a truck (a large semi-trail­er truck) arrived, and the dri­ver unloaded box­es of goods onto a con­vey­or belt. The bar­codes on the box­es were scanned for inven­to­ry, and then ware­house work­ers had to sep­a­rate the box­es with cloth­ing, unpack the oth­er box­es, and place the items on wheeled shelves before dis­trib­ut­ing them through­out the store. Some items, like wall clocks, paint­ings, mir­rors, and fur­ni­ture, were unpacked imme­di­ate­ly and tak­en to the sales floor. Box­es with cloth­ing went down a dif­fer­ent con­vey­or belt, where the cloth­ing was unpacked, and almost every item was tagged with a “hard tag”—a small plas­tic tag that beeps when pass­ing through the store’s exit (if it is not removed at the cash reg­is­ter). Then the item was hung on a rack, and a plas­tic size tag called “nabs” was attached to it before being placed on a spe­cial cart. The filled carts were then dis­trib­uted and the cloth­ing was dis­played in the sales area.

I found that work­ing with my hands was not easy, espe­cial­ly for some­one who had nev­er worked at such a pace. It was essen­tial to know the store lay­out well to place the items cor­rect­ly on the shelves of the carts and then quick­ly dis­trib­ute them through­out the store. It was also nec­es­sary to under­stand the range of prod­ucts well. When look­ing at some jars, they looked nice, and it was hard to tell whether they were bath prod­ucts, facial or body cos­met­ics, or for cars. For exam­ple: small dress­es could be for dolls or new­borns, but it turned out to be dog cloth­ing. It was nec­es­sary to read labels and under­stand the codes on the tags.

Work

I was assigned to unpack and hang clothes. This task had many nuances. First­ly, Amer­i­can sizes dif­fer from Russ­ian sizes. There are many con­ven­tions; for exam­ple, some cloth­ing items require let­ter sizes while oth­ers use numer­i­cal sizes. Children’s cloth­ing has its own num­ber­ing, and junior cloth­ing has a num­ber­ing dif­fer­ent from adult sizes. I was helped and trained by a Russ­ian-speak­ing girl who worked in the ware­house when Valenti­na was the man­ag­er and knew her well.

The first time was very dif­fi­cult. I had to read labels to dis­trib­ute sizes cor­rect­ly and then place the items prop­er­ly in the store. At first, I worked very slow­ly. I often had to change my read­ing glass­es between near and dis­tance vision. Lat­er, we went to Cost­co to see the optometrist, and I got glass­es that have three zones: the upper zone for dis­tance, the mid­dle for com­put­er work, and the low­er zone for read­ing up close. How­ev­er, I need­ed to get used to these glass­es, as they cre­ate tun­nel vision; if I need­ed to look side­ways, I had to turn my whole head, not just my eyes. Nev­er­the­less, with them, my work became faster and easier.