First Days Back...

The first day back to work always sucks, I have had three first days back so far this summer because of the trip to Indiana and my two vacations this summer. I did really well last week when it came to staying away from my store, I didn't go in once, and I didn't call. This is probably why today was one of the worst days back I have had in a long time. I had no idea what I was walking back into this morning, and my boss wasn't even there today to give me a hand.

There wasn't one major thing that made the day hard, it was just a number of things that were going on. I walked in this morning to three new employees sitting in my office waiting to be trained. Training is really hard as on a day when you are expecting it, OK well maybe not hard but it is time consuming. Paperwork alone takes at least an hour if you read the employee handbook with them. Then of course you need to give them a tour of the store, introduce them to people, get them a locker and a register sign on, get them acquainted with the rules and systems, show them how to ring on the register, etc. So I spent a majority of my morning working on the unexpected training. Of course the training was interrupted by numerous phone calls and on conference call that I needed to participate in because my boss was out today.

Once I finally completed my portion of the training and brought the new employees to there departments in the store, it was close to 1:30 and I needed to complete their paperwork and redo the schedule so that the employees knew when they needed to come into work this week. This took about one hour and then I needed to do the sales reports for last week. By this time I needed to run my 3:00 departmental meeting, this always takes about an hour.

So by 4:00 I had still not had a chance to read my email, or check my voicemail. I had to check in on the store and oh so many other things a manager needs to do on the first day back. I left at 6:15 this evening and I was exhausted. Tomorrow is going to be like my First Day Back Take 2. I wish I was still on vacation!

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