Jobs I’ve had: K-Mart Electronics Department

After my Freshman year of college was over, I booked it down to Key West (where my parents had been living for a year) and got a job working in the K-Mart Electronics Department.

This job was awesome. I got paid $10 an hour to hang out in the back corner of the store putting CDs in order and facing the merchandise. This is great for someone who enjoys organizing other people’s shit.

I also learned a bit of espanol. Like when the Cuban kids would ask when the newest Pokemon Game Boy would be in-stock, I would say, “Manana.” If there’s one thing I remember about that summer it was those damn Pokemon games! Holy shit. There were four versions that were released periodically that summer.

Of course, here’s the problem with Key West and K-Mart’s advertising plan. All the shit that’s advertised in the weekend papers was most likely not in our store. We were the last stop on the truck, so.. after Miami-Dade, Key Largo and Marathon.. there was nothing else for us and people would be pissed (like I’m the one who decided not to ship it).

My biggest pet peeve would be when people would try to check out in the electronics department, when they didn’t purchase a single item from electronics. In fact, one day.. I had rung an item up for Y and the woman stated it was in fact X. I went over to sporting goods, looked at the sign and it was Y. She started throwing a tantrum and I said, “Ma’am, maybe if you had checked out in sporting goods, we wouldn’t be having this problem.” And damn, she went off.

But the problem with sporting goods is that the dude who worked over there never manned his register, which posed a problem for me because I did not know how to a) make keys; or, b) sell a fishing license (which is a big scam). So I was paging that guy. A lot.

My second biggest pet peeve was when people would go over to the stereos and turn the volume up on several of them. Seriously? Although sometimes I would turn the volume up on one and jam out, then blame it on a customer if anyone ever asked.

Overall, everyone was friendly and great fun. We did have a bit of drama that summer when one of the managers left her husband to move in with one of females that worked in stocking. But it was Key West and no one was entirely shocked.