Summer in the City

Long Update

Wow, it's been forever since I've updated.

Pretty much all the past few weeks have been is internship and work. This past week has been really crazy at the internship though. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were all the same. We are getting all the salesmen samples in for market which is the first week in August. So when they come in I'm in charge of unpacking them (they come individually wrapped in plastic bags--like they do to the stores), sorting them, hanging them, and keeping a running inventory of what we have and what we still need. Its an ongoing process and every time you get the pile almost done a new delivery arrives. There were other little random projects to fill the time and meetings as well, but my whole life this week has been samples.

Thusday I wasn't really supposed to work but it's been so hectic that I came in anyways because I knew they would need me-and I was right! As soon as I came in I got to know the joy of "placeholders". Basically whatever we weren't going to get in by the big assortment meetings in the samples we had to still have SOMETHING for them to look at. So I had to print out the sketch and spec page, and then color swatch it, and hang it where the garment would go. I had to do this for every style and every color that was missing. And of course while I was doing this more samples came in.

Friday was by far the craziest day. I got there and right away I had stuff to do. First Alyssa and I did more placeholders, and then tackled the samples that had arrived. Next we started on a project for the design team-making color swatch cards for the Fall 2007 line. Basically there is a page for each delivery with all the colors used listed-and we paste the actual fabric color swatch on the page. These cards they send to factories for them to match up the colors on the garments. This was a huge task because we ahd to cut all the swatches by hand, but it's not due until the 31st so we have some time to work on it.

After lunch was when things started getting a little hectic. Aubrey (the director of merchandising) has been in Hong Kong all week and she came back on Friday, so we had to get all the samples ready and inventoried and in order. We organized the samples by delivery, classification and style. We started getting more samples in while we were doing this! As we went along we found out we needed more placeholders, so we had to do that, too.

Finally Aubrey arrived and the mood of the office changed dramatically. Everyone seems less stressed and much happier when she is around-its definately nice to have her back.

When she arrived she brought four suitcases of "hand carried" samples from the Hong Kong factory. It didn't take us long to unpack, inventory, etc all of them. And Aubrey even brought each of us-even the interns-a little gift from Hong Kong! On the way out Aubrey told me that she had been in contact with the girls in the office all week and she heard that I was a huge help--and thanked me for all my hard work.

Also this week we had a new girl start in the office as part of the women's merchandising team. She sits next to me so I got to talk to her a bit. It turns out she used to be an intern at CKJ! She got hired right after graduation as part of the sales team and she just decided she wanted to do Merchandising. So I got to talk to her about the difference between the two which was awesome. Also, Alexis is only a couple years older than me so it was reassuring to know that someone so young could do so well already.

On the other hand, being a server is really starting to get on my nerves. I can't wait to have a 9-5 job that I enjoy. Recently I've been so impatient with my tables. It may just be waiting tables in New York, but whatever it is, I've found I've been putting up with my table's bullshit less and less since I've moved here. For example, last night I had a table where the girl asked for "extra" lemons in her tea, so I gave her three extra lemons. She then proceeded to interrupt me while I was taking her boyfriend's order to demand more lemons, in a not so nice way. So I snapped my order book shut, walked away from the table mid-order, and brought her back an entire glass of lemon wedges and slammed it down on the table in front of her.

There was also the full grown woman who insisted on ordering off the kids menu. So I served her cherry coke in a 6 ounce plastic kids cup, complete with zoo animal decorations.

I also had a table that wanted to talk rather than decide what tehy wanted to eat, and after going over to the table twice and them telling me to "come back in a few minutes", I let them set fifteen minutes after I knew they were ready to order.

I don't think I would have ever done these things in Virginia. Why is NYC so different? For one the managers don't care. In fact they applauded my behavior when I told them. We are in Times Square, who cares if that one table doesn't come back? We will always have business. In a way that makes me sad, I used to care so much about the guests but now they just annoy the hell out of me. I think also it might be that this internship is giving me a taste of what is next for me and I cannot wait for it, so it makes waiting tables seem so......boring and irritating.

Today I am at my parent's house visiting. My grandma is in town and I haven't seen her in several years, and of course I get to see my parents and sister. And Brian came over for the day, which was great but very short. I miss him so much already, and I just can't wait for these last two weeks to be over so that I can get back to Richmond and be with him and all my friends again.

posted by Jessica @ 9:21 PM