Category: Becoming the Bailey’s

Can’t believe it has been 11 years

I remember as a child anytime someone would speak of President Kennedy they would always add that they remembered where they were and what they were doing when he was assassinated.  As a young person, those statements had no real meaning.

September 11, 2001 brought meaning to those words.  I was at the Best Buy in  Albany NY.  My Operations partner Sara and I had flown in Sunday morning for the physical Inventory Sunday night.  We woke up early Monday morning and headed to the store to help begin the reconciliation process.    I had been in the warehouse unaware of anything happening until I walked into the employee break room where I found a few employees watching television. They told me that there had been an accident and a plane had hit the World Trade Center tower.  As I stood there, the second plane hit.  I still recall the chill I felt, the shock, the looks we shared because we all knew that this had been no accident.

The next few hours become more blurred.  Employees who had family member in NY city.  Changing all of the televisions to live news and setting up chairs for customers to sit. My mother finally getting a hold of me, in tears.  I remember telling her I was sorry I had not called but I was not in NYC.

We were due to fly home later in the day which of course could not happen since air travel was shut down.  We ended up in a dumpy motel in a not so nice nearby city.  We shared a room and took shifts throughout the night watching the television hoping survivors would be found.  This was not intentional it kind of just happened. The next morning we drove our rental car home.  Driving into the silent airport is another feeling I will never forget.

We would like to pound our chest and say that the cowards who attacked civilians going to work did not change us, but that is not true.  We have cameras on every corners watching our every move.  We are molested while trying to board an airplane.  We hand over our personal belongings for search as we enter any large public venue.

Interviews are done with people who always say similar things about they do not mind a little inconvenience if it makes them safer.  But is it any safer really?  As people were taking off their shoes in the Philly airport in March, a drunk out of control man drove his car right through security fences onto the runway of the airport.  Last week the current boyfriend of a woman mad about the actions of an ex called in a fake bomb threat to a plane the ex was on.  The plane full of people  traveling to Texas had to be turned around and searched.  Millions of dollars spent on cameras that no one watches or do not work.  A study done over the summer showed half of the cameras in a Philadelphia  did not function properly.

The buildings at ground zero are still not completed due to labor and political issues and the museum still not open due to political and religious disagreement .  And we still refer to it as “Ground Zero”.

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”  Benjamin Franklin

Will this fill the void? (an ongoing story)

I was hired at Best Buy as a media supervisor due to my experience at good ole Sam Goody.  I was in charge of the giant area in the center of the store, and in those days it was giant.  We still had VHS and cassette tapes boxed computer software and of course DVD’s.  My department did well and at the first chance I had to apply for a promotion I jumped on it!

I was promoted to a management position in merchandising.  I was not the greatest at that, to put it mildly.  Best Buy in the early years made a decision that to compete it needed to grow quickly.  They would blast a market with multi-store same day openings.  IT would cause great hoopla and a lot of press.  People would line up for great deal.

Behind the scenes it caused issues.  Low stock levels and awful shrink problems due to large amounts of employees hired in small periods of time, trianed by other short term employees.  This opportunity allowed for me to use my strength.  Identify and attack the issue.  Most of the stores in our market had massive shrink issues, (loss, theft etc).   I was moved to inventory control in one store and within a few months we had either retrained, relocated or arrested all who needed.  By Inventory time the store was under budget and did even better the next time.  Due to the companies continued massive growth, it did not take too long before I got my shot to take over my own district where we did the same.  Massive retraining, lots of meetings with employees to gain buy-in, a few arrests here and there and success for the mission of shrink control.

Life was good!  For many years I had fun at work.  But like everything it had to change.  That type of growth could not continue forever.

Somewhere around 2002ish they started the “re-structuring” .  A politically correct way of saying downsizing and piling of work on another.  I would assume other roles with little to no additional pay.  Lots of headaches.  And it hit me…I was making great money, had lots of toys but hated getting up in the morning hated everything around me.

I had achieved everything I wanted, power, money success so what was my problem?  Frank and I had been talking about children but after the way I grew up I was so afraid that we would be terrible parents.

We were married six years before having Megan.  I made the decision early in my pregnancy that I would resign my position after having the baby.  My market won a holiday contest sending myself and several other of my team to LA for a few days.  I was about 4 months pregnant at the time of the trip.  I think this trip was part of helping to make the decision.  I did a good amount of traveling with work, late nights and early mornings.  This would not be good for my soon to be growing family. I did not tell anyone at the company this until after Megan was born, they would probably never have believed me anyway.

Megan was born In August 2004, I resigned in October, at the end of my leave.  Once I looked at that adorable little face I knew I could not go back to work.  I was given the opportunity my mother never had, the opportunity to be home for every fall, every tear, every smile, every everything and I jumped on it!

I was going to be a millionaire at Sam Goody?

I remember when I was young.  I was going to be the CEO of some large Corporation, make lots of money never get married and definitely never have children!

My mother was divorced before I was 2. I did not have much contact with my father, (and that is a generous statement). After the divorce she lost her house.  We bought our sneakers right before school at Sears, I wore my brother’s hand me downs and we ate pancakes and meatloaf once a week for dinner to make things stretch. I shared a room with my sister until we were teenagers and 1 bathroom with 4 of us. We were raised to be strong!  We did not need a man to make us whole.

I was taught some important lessons growing up, hard work and determination!  No one was going to do it for you, no one else would pay your bills, no one else was responsible for my actions. And whining about it would get you nowhere!

Even through college I believed I would be a single woman.   By then I  think I had given up the CEO idea but there were still no children in my future.  I worked hard not to ever let anyone get too close.

OF course we all know how these things go, a few years, pass things change.After college I took the first job I was offered because I had loans to pay back.  My four years in college landed me a job at Sam Goody Music making $15,500 a year!  I lived with my mother for several years paying her a small rent and saved as much as I could.

I will not say that when I met Frank he was the man of my dreams, quite the opposite actually.  We worked together and to put it mildly, we did not get along.Over time we both moved up in the company and no longer worked in the same store.  I guess he missed me because one day I got a call asking me on a date.  I thought it was a joke but went anyway.  One thing lead to another and 17 years later , (14 years married)  here we are.

It was not easy of course.  Friends laugh still shaking heads as to how we manged to make it through the dating period.  Frank was never smooth, he did not have any money but what he had was a simple ability to make me laugh.  Life is a struggle, laughter does not always come easy.  I remember going out one time and having to be lifted through the passenger window of the car because the doors would not open.  Not even sure if it was safe to be driving around in that car.  It was like something out of Dukes of Hazard.  It was always unpredictable and always interesting.

When we got married we lived in the house that Frank had grown up in.  He had lost his parents years earlier. It was a real fixer upper but it was our little piece of the American Dream.  We lived check to check and struggled.  We both worked very hard.  So hard that sometimes we forgot the laughter that brought us together in the first place.  We had issues, who doesn’t.  Over the years we both moved up in our careers and with that came more money.  We moved to a bigger house, bought more toys and worked even harder.

I had been lucky to join Best Buy as they were growing.  They were about to open the first 5 stores in our area, I took a pay cut to join a growing company.  I remember the job offer, $9.75 and hour and oh by the way you need to pass a drug test.  I took it  and worked even harder.  7 days a week often before the store was opened.Hard work brought great reward, with in a year I received my first promotion followed by several moves in the next few years.  I did very well with BBY staying with them for a little over 10 years.  We no longer worried about paying the bills, we had lots of “stuff” and had a few dollars in the bank.

Something was missing