Ok, its been over a month and Joel has officially been done with his training for a couple of weeks now. So I thought I would update every one on how its going.
First, Joel is enjoying it. We both never thought retail would be his thing but he is really enjoying it. The reasons are that he is still leading and teaching and training people to be the best at what the job requires. And he gets to be a part of something that implements change. These are two things that Joel always wants to be a part of. No matter where it happens. And right now Target is the place for him to do this. He was able to do both of those things with teaching (which is why it was so hard for us to say goodbye to it) but the paycheck didn't allow him to do those two things to the best of his ability.
The cons so far to this job are the hours. We are getting use to them but they are taking quite awhile for us to adjust to them. To give you an idea why its so much harder now than when he was training is because of the store he has been placed at. He is at the only high risk store in Tucson. By high risk, we mean that it has the most potential for theft and asset loss. Also, this is the only store that stays open until 11 PM. So when he was at other stores and they closed at 10 he would be home by 11:30. But with the store closing an hour later and being a high risk store, there is more to do at closing. So Joel won't get home until 2-3 in the morning. Which also means he sleeps the morning away before he has to go to work again or on his day off. The other reason he comes home so late on his closing days is because the routine of having a manager and store manager at this store hasn't been in place for very long. Before Joel's store manager came on the scene the store had gone without a store team lead for a while and Joel's dept. had gone without a team lead for 10 months. So people slacked off and didn't get the job done. Now the bosses are here and its going to take some time to whip them into shape. So the light at the end of the tunnel is that Joel won't be staying that late forever. Hopefully 12:30/ 1 AM will be the norm.
The pros to the job besides the first stuff I mentioned are, first the paycheck. We are able to make the same amount of money in one job that we had with all five of our jobs combined. And there will be a raise. The whole time that Joel was teaching there were budget cuts every year, so there was never a pay raise. Also, days off. We have not known what that was like for 3 years. Joel worked every day and I did too. We now have 2 days off a week together. Its amazing that we are able to have a day where we hang out as a family either at the zoo, the children's museum, the park or at home. Its been a wonderful adjustment. Even with the hours that Joel is working now. I should say that he is not working any more hours than he did before but they are just at weird times.
Well there is the update. I am sure there will be more stories to come. But I wanted you to know that its going well and Joel is enjoying it. Even if Nathan wakes him up after 5 hrs of sleep, he just naps while Nathan naps and then goes to work.
This is one of the ways we spend a day off. Nathan loves to wear his life jacket so we just filled up our little pool and left him in a diaper. He had a blast!
