How a "Trip" Down the Aisle Nearly Lands Me a Job (PT 1)

My daughters birthday party is coming up this weekend, and with all the mishaps that life has handed us this past week it's been a difficult road to partyville. $800 down the crapper...literally. We had a big septic tank issue this week that drained our party budget. On the verge of having to move the party to another weekend, a miracle happened. All our family and friends came to the rescue. The party has lost some of the uber nifty frills that were originally scheduled, and has now become more of a potluck than a hosted bbq. But we have wonderful friends and family who have gone above and beyond to make sure this party still happens, and we are ever grateful.

Well tonight my mother and I went off to our local Wal-Mart in search of random party supplies, when a fortunate accident occurred. We were in the produce section when my mother called my attention to something behind me. As I took a step to turn around, my foot went from under me. Used to the feeling of my body flailing out of control, I quickly grabbed onto my cart to keep myself from landing all the way down on the floor. As soon as I grabbed the cart, with my body still in motion, I instantly felt pain in my wrist and a pull in my back. Once I was back on both feet and standing in a fully upright position I looked down and saw that I had slipped on a squished grape. I instantly started laughing. I couldn't believe that I ACTUALLY slipped on misplaced product and ACTUALLY hurt myself in a store. It's hard for me to believe that these sort of things actually happen honestly, but I guess if they did, it would most certainly happen to me. If you knew me, this would make sense. I am normally covered in bruises or scratches sustained from dangerous activities like...walking.

I take a look around and my mom is staring at me, mouth agape, wondering what the hell just happened. Behind my mother is another lady with a shopping cart. A witness. A very helpful witness as it would turn out, as she was an off duty Wal-Mart employee. The look on her face said that what she just saw was some serious shit that could go very wrong for the store if they didn't handle it properly. She helped me flag down a manager and had me explain to him what happened. She verified everything and even juiced up my story a bit. "She twisted her knee!"

Within minutes there was a swarm of Wal-Mart employees buzzing around with orange hazard cones, taking pictures of the "scene" and handing me paperwork to fill out. I was still trying very hard to stifle my laughter at the cliche of the situation. I kept hearing Ezal from FRIDAY in my head. "OH my neck! My back! My neck AND my back! Oh I want $150,000. But we can settle out of court right now for twenty bucks."

As I was filling out paperwork one of the night time managers was there talking to me. I can't remember now what he said that prompted me to solicit myself, but I suddenly found myself saying "Are you guys hiring right now?" He said  "They are hiring desperately for evening shifts right now."

"Oh? Okay. Well, for what positions?"
"Unloading the trucks."
"Okay, well how do you do that?"
"Well the trucks come in and they take the pallets off and then put everything on the shelves. That's all."
"Okay, I'm hired. What do I do now?"

I'm not sure at which point I turned into Erin Brockovich and hired myself, but he didn't seem to mind. He actually was very helpful and told me to go online and what to fill out and what things to click and then said that I could call the store and follow up with him sometime in the next 2 days. I'm not actually sure if at that point he meant about my injuries or about a job. But I'll take it the way I want to and call about a job.

It would be a big change going from an 8-5/M-F office job to a night shift Wal-Mart shelf stocker, but lately my whole life has been about change. So maybe this will just be the next step in me finding the footing of my new life. I have been asking God lately to just show me where he wants me to be. I was very worried at first that maybe I wasn't taking enough of an active roll. But then I stopped one day as I was digging a trench and thought, "Maybe, this is where God wants me to be right now. Being undistracted and open to helping my parents whenever they need me and with whatever they might need help with. Today, God just wants me to dig this trench. So that's what I'll do." The next day as it turned out, God wanted me to paint the house. I am getting better at doing what "they say" we should all do, take it one day at a time. Today, I suppose God wanted me to slip on a grape. We'll see if tomorrow he wants me to work nights at Wal-Mart.