Target Gave Me Skills
Pretty much all of my childhood and young adult life is a fog when I think of social situations. I can remember certain events and every detail about them but over all I cannot remember kids I went to school with or many people who I had worked with during my young age of 16 up to my early 20′s. I do remember many people who I spoke with and socialized with to a point and I did have friends but I do not remember how we stopped being friends. I don’t have any recollection of why we stopped hanging out or talking. I am under the sneaky suspicion that it was my doing some how. Either I just dropped off the face of the earth in their world or they got sick of me.
I do recall several people who I just stopped talking to.
I just didn’t return their phone calls and I let them go. There were several times where my anxiety caused me to never speak to them again. I have a phone phobia for sure, I always feel like I am calling at the wrong time or something. I do not want to interrupt anything or be bothersome. I also get all freaked out when they say they will call me, I need a time. I try to insist on a time because otherwise all day long I am thinking about when they may call and I can’t get started on anything because if they call then whatever I was doing will be interrupted and I will not be able to focus on the person at all and I admit at times I get quite annoyed by that. We finally just stopped answering the most days because David and I both have phone issues and surprise phones calls affects our family in a big way.
Although, when people call me unexpectedly and it is family or they sound in need I will drop whatever and call them back.
The thing is though, that has given me the control over the calling, I have had time to process and now can communicate and make the adjustments for the day to be able to talk on the phone. Some would say I am being a control freak but it is not about that it is about the disruption of our family schedule and social anxiety that no matter what, I will experience even if the phone conversation goes well and I feel that I was understood and I that I didn’t make any social mess ups. It takes a lot for David and myself to talk on the phone, it really stresses us out. I have another whole phone post that I need to write. It goes way back to childhood, me and my phone phobia.
As for my social skills, well most people would never even know that I have any issues.
I learned from the best. At the age of 16 I was hired on as a cashier at a Target store. I knew retail, my mom had worked for Air-Way and then it was bought out by Target. She would have to bring me to work many nights and I loved to help clean up, they called it zoning. She was in the clothing department and I loved being surround by the clothes in the middle of those circle racks. It was so cozy and comforting, however I was not supposed to go under them and would get in quite a bit of trouble for doing so. I have fond memories of working there. I loved working but I hated anything to do with customers. My customer service, lets say lack of, was always getting me into trouble. I am not one who believes that the customer is always right, but I was conditioned into thinking so.
Eventually I was able to work a job there that was just filling the shelves.
I loved it! The merchandise had order, the empty spaces had to be filled, and any over stock had to be put away. The items all needed to be put in their proper places and neatly. I transferred to a different store and was promoted to charge back, I love it too. Eventually, transferring to the stock team, unloading trucks, stocking shelves and putting away over stock. Then to a position that was called pull team at the time which used a scanner to scan the lows and empties on the floor and then it told you where it was in the stock room so I could pull it and fill the shelves. Thinking of that job still makes me smile. I loved it, I genuinely enjoyed doing those things. Eventually, I was promoted to front end, the worst time of my career and then promoted again to the sales floor in several different departments and ultimately to a management position.
I was pretty happy with that because I was over the backroom and logistics of the store, no customers.
Once I had to start dealing with customers as management I began to hate my job. During all of these positions I learned a ton about social skills. However, there was always my attitude problem. Just as in school, I always got in trouble for my “smart” mouth and that did not change in the work force. I came across very aggressive and hateful to my peers and to management at times. Most of the time I had no clue that I was behaving in a negative way, there were times though that I didn’t care, I knew that they wouldn’t get rid of me, I was a fantastic employee. I always got excellent reviews on my performance but would score low on my appearance and attitude. I hate socks and I even got written up for not wearing socks one year because it was policy but I hated them so much I just couldn’t wear them.
I had been talked to quite a bit before I got written up but my manager was serious about disciplining me.
I wish I would have known then what I know now and I would have told her “hey back off I have sensory issues!” Ok, I wouldn’t be that rude but it would have been nice to let her know that I wasn’t directly being a pain in the butt, I seriously had issues with socks. (Still do) In every position I learned how I was supposed to talk to people, that I am not supposed to say certain things and that some of the things I say can be very hurtful. Many people thought of me as the girl who would just say what was on her mind, which is true but I was not doing it to be hurtful. I said whatever was on my mind because that is what I saw, felt, or understood from the situations.
One of the greatest things Target did for me was to give me social scripts.
Not only did I learn them from the classes they had us do but my mother worked her way up too through the company and became a store manager, she learned even more scripts which in turn she would say to me. She didn’t do it on purpose, what would happen was a certain situation would arise, I would talk to her and she would tell me the script without knowing that it was a social script. My mother learned social scripts too from Target and it made it very difficult for her to come out of them after she left. Even now she will still apply certain social scripts learned from Target to a situation and it is not the best thing to do. I don’t stick to the scripts as rigidly, I am not sure why, maybe because I had more freedom as a child and I really like to entertain and be funny so I improv much more.
Target had team leaders and management go through training constantly.
At one point it was called Target University and it went through everything. We trained on peer situations, customer service, human resource issues, dealing with vendors, diversity, sexual harassment, management styles, what type of personality we were, how we learned best, you name it we did it. Through all of those training sessions we would have to get into groups, play out scenarios, get up in front of the class and role play, answer questions, get tested on what we learned and let our peers evaluate us. At first I was a nervous wreck, I would have panic attacks before hand but once I saw that this gave me a platform to act, I started to really enjoy them. I could excel at this stuff and take what I learned and apply it to my job and then get even better at my job. I still would have anxiety afterwords but when it comes to work my anxiety has always gone to the side because when I have a job to do nothing else stands in my way.
I really enjoy working, it gives me purpose, routine, schedules and deadlines.
I liked having someone tell me when I needed to come in, how many hours I had to work, what I needed to get accomplished in the hours I was there and the sense of accomplishment I felt when I would achieve my goals. I really enjoyed Target because they had binders and binders full of policy and procedures for each department, each position in the store and through out the company, they were very organized. I did find it frustrating when a store that I was working in did not follow the rules. Myself or someone would get trumped by management, but overall it was very comforting and reading those manuals gave me a lot of the information that I still use today in my social situations. Without Target’s training I am really not sure how well I would have done in the work force. Being that I have an “attitude problem” and I say things to my peers and bosses that are not always appropriate. 
Thanks to Target I was trained in social etiquette and diversity, among many other things.
