Only 3 weeks left of training!

I LOVE MY JOB!!!

No...really. I really really do! I work crazy hours at the beginning of each week (but that means I get to go home early on Fridays)

I get to play with samples and make pretty advertisements!

I get to go to vendor lunches and have $19 crabcakes for free which were the most delicious crabcakes I've ever had. EVER! Then I get to goto vendor meetings and work the Fall and Spring lines.

True, it's not all glamorous. I spend countless hours in front of the computer logging shipments, tracking daily sales, keying purchase orders, uploading price changes, etc etc. But at the end of the day (even 11 hour days like today)....I still really love it. I am challenged, but not in a bad way. In that way that makes you feel exhausted yet FULFILLED at the same time. It's great, I'm so lucky!!

Let's see, what else has been going on at work. It's getting close to the end of training, in fact I have less than 3 weeks left! I should actually be hearing sometime this week if I'm getting placed early or not. If not, I'm not that concerned. I love where I'm training and the more practice I get, the better. But if I get pulled then I'm ready to go!

Last week I got some face time with my DMM (divisional merchandise manager, my buyer's boss). Every Monday morning we have a meeting with her for about 15 minutes to review the best sellers from the previous week Last Monday was my first time "presenting" to her...she asked a few questions, but the good thing was that I was prepared with all the answers. I felt like a rock star after the meeting, and she told me I did a great job, as did my buyer and my coach.

And to confirm my total rockstardom, I got an email from HR this morning telling me that I was chosen to have a store management intern shadow me for 3 hours on Thursday. The good news is that HR thinks highly enough of me to choose me (I was 1 of 5 out of 26 trainees). The bad news is I have to squeeze this in to my already tight tight schedule at work. This week I have so much to do, it's unreal. I have all my assistant buyer duties, on top of all of my training, plus some corporate meetings (legal compliance training, etc). The good news behind all this is that I will probably be out of hours really early on Friday, so I can leave early and head to Richmond! I am excited to see Brian and all my friends!!! :)

Ok, off to bed, I'm beat. More soon, I promise!

Long Update...again

So I've learned so much since my last post!!! A lot of the same things that I posted about before, but just more in depth. In fact, starting this week, I am doing a lot of the responsibilities by myself!

Last week I got to help with all kinds of things, and I got to sit in on a holiday ad meeting, and a vendor meeting to help pick out Spring 09 fashion socks :)

Today I had my midpoint review, and it went REALLY well! My trainer, and my buyer, both said I'm doing really really well and they had been very impressed with me! They talk to HR tomorrow about me, and they think I will be placed into my department in the next couple of weeks. Actually, they asked me if I felt ready to be placed, and if I felt ready, they felt I was, too. But I don't want to rush anything....if I get into my office too soon, and my buyer has high expectations, that could be bad for me in the long run. Also this is the first week that I feel like I half know what I'm doing, and I still have a zillion questions!! So ultimately we decided that I would stay another 2 weeks or so, and my trainer would give me EVERYTHING she does on a daily basis. So basically I will be doing the Assistant Buyer job, but just have her for backup when I need it, which will be good!! She said she was going to try to find out tomorrow where they are thinking of placing me, and they aren't going to let me get in with anyone they don't like!!

On a personal note, Brian and I went to Hilton Head last weekend for 4th of July!!! It was awesome and so great to spend so much time with him :)

Ok, time for bed, this girl's gotta be up early now!