People born after the year 2000 will never fully understand the generational hype of Abercrombie and Fitch. They will also never understand the concept of work ethic, but that's a whole other issue.
After shopping at Abercrombie throughout my whole high school career (of course I was voted best dressed) I went to college and applied at A&F. I remember when I got hired, my elation equivalent was comparable to winning Publishers Clearing House big check (also if you were born after 2000 you have no idea what that is). It was like I was chosen out of obscurity to join an elitist group. I look back and wonder how I was able to upkeep my highlights, and vodka diet all whilst making 8.75 an hour. I guess it truly was a magical time. I learned a lot of life lessons from my career at Abercrombie.
1. Dress for success. The better you look, the less you have to do. When you showed up to work in a seasonal AF look, you got to stand in the front and simply greet people. Literally stand there and say "hi". When you wore last season looks, you were stuck putting back peoples clothes from the fitting room...The ugly shift.
2. Being Resourceful. With the amount of employees in the same age demographic, there was a lot of parties... The best way to get rid of a hangover is hair of the dog. You can't be at work with a margarita in your hand, but you can be at work with vodka in a water bottle!
3. Time Management. When you only have a half hour for lunch break but you have a casting, you simply "forget" to clock out for lunch and you go to the casting. That's being an entrepreneur.
4. Reliability. When you book that modeling job, but you are scheduled to work: You put a little bit of hand soap in your eye. When it gets nice and red, you take a picture of your eye and send it to your manager with "I think I might have pink eye... I can still come in..." -Nobody wants pink eye, so they will say "stay at home and get better!" **Side note: it will only burn for a couple seconds and the redness from the soap goes away soon after**
5. Communication. When a customer asked to check for a different size in back, you go in the stock room and chat with your friends for a few minutes, and then go back to the customer and say "Sorry everything we have in that style is out."
Working in retail made me truly disrespect the natural public. People really are so dumb...
