Tag: decisions

Me, the early years

When we were young, my mother wanted us to get the best possible education.  She wanted us to do better than she did in life. The public schools in our area at the time were not very good.  She went to our church  parish and asked for tuition help.  My mother was a Catholic born and raised.  We went to church every Sunday.  I never fully understood her belief since they felt she was a bad Catholic because of her divorce, but week after week we went. For the help with tuition,  we all worked.  I raked leaves at the convent, cleaned desks in the school over the summer and moved things between classrooms.

It taught me all an important lesson in life, nothing in the world is free!  If you are to succeed, the road is not easy.  If you are not willing to put your back into it, work hard, success does not come.  This is a lesson my husband and I are trying to instill in our girls.  It is tough these days with the media generation and immediate gratification.  We are able to give our girls many of the things neither of us had as children.  We often battle with the “what is too much” line.

In 5th grade they were a bit worried about me. I was a latch key kid.  Back then leaving young kids alone was not as frowned upon as it is today. I had a strong imagination. Idle time and I were not the best of friends. I had a wonderful teacher by the name of Helene Kunicki who kept me after school many days.  I would help her do whatever, clean out closets, move desks.  Spending time with her helped close the gap before my mother would get home from work.  She was a wonderful woman who through a simple act of kindness probably helped change the course of my life by keeping me out of trouble.

My mother ruled with an iron fist.  There was none of this “mommy friend” thing we see so much of today.  She was the boss. In hindsight it is easy to judge her but I saw a woman left to raise 3 children alone.  A woman limited professionally due to her own background and single motherhood.  A woman who battled cancer for 10 years.  It is always easy to judge when you do not have to walk in that persons shoes.

The rules in our house were clear!  If your grades were down there was nothing else, period.  By high school I had begun to excel and when I graduated college I did so on the dean’s list.

As I look back at how we were raised, I wish many things would have been different.  But such is life.  She was far from perfect but I am glad for many of the life lessons I learned . Those early years leave an impression of course but as time goes on each person must make a decision.  What type of person do I want to be?  What will I hold on to and what must be left behind? Will I allow the not so pleasant moments to be baggage or fuel to do better?

Life is all about decisions.

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!