Filling in Schedule Gaps

So I don't understand what it is with most work places requiring at least SOME sort of job experience. I had just recently gotten my job at Benton Express through Infiniti Employment Agency here in Orlando, Florida, but I got another call from Halloween City that I applied at in-store, as they were opening, around the same time I applied at Infiniti. They had me come in for a job interview since they were going to hire more people after having hired their initial few people, and having told them that I have been working at Benton Express for a month, I managed to get myself a job at Halloween City as well, albeit it's still a temporary job.

I've applied to countless many places before I decided to try out a temp agency. Some places I've tried online, some I've gone to the store (half of which, they told me to apply online anyway), and I also tried to get in to places where my friends worked at. The most I've gotten was a job interview, and that was it. Nothing more, despite how much of a hard-worker I am as I've proven now at Benton Express and Ross's warehouse. I guess there just was no way of proving it, despite having put down a few people for reference; they just don't care if it isn't an official establishment. I can sort of understand, but do places REALLY not want to give people a chance? Without some sort of doorway of getting some job experiences like a temporary agency, it seems like no one can really get a job, unless you have a college degree for a field that isn't sought after very much, or just get very lucky. My other option is still to create a portfolio of my own works, which may or may not apply to you, depending on what your field of work you're looking for. This is common for artists of many kinds, but I am willing to try this out with programming and possibly web design by incorporating what I can do on this blog, if I don't hire someone else to do it for me. My focus is still on Java at the moment.

It just seems weird that I have gone from no work for 2 years, to two temp jobs in a month. Maybe the timing I got my first temp job was just close to the seasonal timing with Halloween City's. Even so, I have greatly reduced the number of places I've applied to since signing up with Infiniti; to 0 places since then in fact, if you don't include all the Halloween places I've applied at at the same time of signing up with Infiniti.

As for how it is at Halloween City now, it wasn't too busy when I first came in at 10:30 AM on a Sunday, but past noon, a lot more people started to show up. I can see why they needed to hire more people now. There were a couple of people who had specific costumes in mind that the store didn't have unfortunately. One of which was a women's Luigi costume. We had men's Luigi, and women's Mario, but not a women's Luigi. I wonder if it sold out because the guy in the couple often wants to be Mario. There was another couple that came in to try out a women's Mario and a men's Luigi instead, which seemed to have worked out.

Speaking of video game characters, there weren't too many selections of costumes that were video game related, unfortunately. I would have liked to work with video games related things, but the only ones we had in store were Mario, Luigi, Wario, Toad, Master Chief, and if you really want to stretch it, Angry Birds. Maybe some others can be done from more generic costumes, like Ezio from Assassin's Creed. The boy's section had some ninja lord costume that kind of looks like SubZero from Mortal Kombat. I also saw a scary jester costume that looks pretty close to Shaco from League of Legends there too.

Aside from video game characters, there were quite a few Avengers and other Marvel costumes available too. There were some Spiderman glasses that looked pretty cool in fact. Other than that, the store was certainly well stocked on generic costumes, like classic Halloween themes, like witches, devils, vampires, werewolves, etc, as well as the occupation costumes like doctors, maids, police, cowboy, pirates, and more. Thankfully, all these are sorted fairly well by aisles, and each section is well-labeled as well so finding things is usually not too hard.

Another thing to note that I noticed about the store is that Halloween City has a pretty good assortment of stuff for decorating a Halloween party with. The selections include Halloween decorations, fog machines, Halloween themed goodies for younger kids, even a set of trophies for a costume contest. A friend of mine is having a Halloween party, so maybe I could pick something up for the party.

Near the end of my shift though, there were a lot of people coming in to try out costumes at the fitting room, and I somehow ended up being stuck there by myself, managing all four dressing rooms that was constantly occupied. Due to store policy, the store associate has to monitor what gets taken into the dressing rooms since accessories aren't allowed to go in there. So I have to take out all the costumes that people want to try out from the bag, and put them back in the bag after they're done, while keeping all 4 customers content. Doesn't sound like a big issue, but so many of the costumes are rather poofy that they don't really go back in the bag as well as you'd hope. I was stuck there until someone came to switch places with me when my shift ended.

I hope I can keep this up though, until however long Halloween City is around. However, that might also mean that I won't be able to make as many updates on the blog as I'd like as well. I just wish that Vicki doesn't spend all my money too, since she seems to be awfully loose with money whenever she has it. I don't like it that she's like that with her own money, mainly because of the kind of things she spends money on (hobos, useless junk that sits around without getting used, fundraisers for the sake of giving money to the causes she supports, but is generally better to directly donate money to them rather than buying something from a fundraiser that gives 10% of its cut to the cause, etc.), but lately she's been forcing me to spend on stupid things as well. This will follow in my next journal and rant post.