A Day in the Life of a Village Shoes Employee: Amanda

9:00 AM: Fall out of bed. Crawl across room to hit snooze on the alarm.

9:10 AM: Fall out of bed. Crawl across room to hit snooze on the alarm.

9:20 AM: Fall out of bed. Crawl across my room to turn off my alarm.

9:30 AM: HAVE A MELTDOWN! I only have 45 minutes to get ready.

9:31-10:15 AM: TAMING MY BEASTLY HAIR.

10:16 AM: Begin walk to Evo’s Coffee Lounge. Wonder if they’ll have any cinnamon raisin bagels left…

10:19 AM: Order a 16oz drip. Yes, my bagel is there! Order cinnamon raisin bagel, not toasted, with cream cheese on the side. Order a packet of Emergen-C…because…you know, customer service.

10:25 AM: Enter Village Shoes. Turn on heat. Turn on music. BLAST IT.

10:25-10:29 AM: DANCE PARTY.

10:30-10:59 AM: Prep store for opening. Turn on the computer. Open POS (which happens to be a real POS at times). Turn on lights. Tidy shoe displays. 

11:00 AM: Allow the masses to pour in by unlocking the door. 

11:00 AM-1:00 PM: Work! Work! Work!* 

1:01-1:15 PM: Look over menus we’ve collected from local restaurants, trying to figure out what to have for lunch. Of course! SMITHFIELDS!

1:16-1:45 PM: Pick up my INSANELY DELICIOUS lunch from Smiffys. Eat it.  

1:46-1:59 PM: Slip in and out of food coma. Hope customers aren’t too demanding and that they aren’t in a hurry because I'm moving at the speed of smell.

2:00:4:45 PM: Work!*

4:46-5:00 PM: Things are startin’ to slow down. Back up the computer. Vacuum. Closing begins.

5:00 PM: KICK CUSTOMERS OUT OF STORE.

*Work truly varies from day to day. Of course my primary role is to help customers with shoes, but when I’m not doing that, there’s TONS of other stuff to do. Since I’m in charge of Village Shoes’ social media accounts, I typically will play around on search the internet for fun images to post on our Facebook page. I send out a weekly email to our customers that have subscribed to our SOLE MATES email list, which entails coming up with creative copy to excite customers about new inventory and promotions. On top of sending out a weekly email, I also post weekly on our blog. The blog is a lot of fun because I am able to write/post about anything I want! I’ve written about mac and cheese, annoyances about people coming into the shop asking if they can “hike” in some of our shoes, gift ideas…the list goes on and on. Although maintaining the Village Shoes blog is a great task to have, it can also be a huge pain in the a**. I’m sure you can imagine how difficult it is to come up with ideas week after week and maintain enthusiasm. When I’m not working on an email campaign, blog post, our Facebook or Twitter, or helping customers, you can find me cleaning. There’s always something to clean. ALWAYS. I’m not particularly ecstatic about cleaning, like most people, but whatever…it needs to get done, so it gets done. There are times that working at Village Shoes feels very much like work, but most of the time it’s quite fun. We honestly have some fantastic customers, and my coworkers have alright great personalities, so the time spent at VS is normally quite pleasant. 

Oh, and how stinkin' cute am I in that photo? I danced to Love Me Tender by Elvis with my tutu that was then replaced by a fringe skirt that was worn to perform to Great Balls of Fire by Jerry Lewis. Little Amanda looked super sweet, but she was just as much as a b***h as she is today.

post by Amanda