Two Eras End In One Week...

This one is personal.



Yesterday was my last game with this group. I have accepted another position in my department, and will be transferred in about 10 days. The drink tent is really just frosting on the cake, a very small part of what I have been doing. The rest of it is really too boring, personal, or potentially politically damaging to post about too much. I manage multiple retail units on campus...that is what I have been doing for the last 4.5 years. Seven of them are retail style stores and two are small restaurants.

Before that I was the manager of the main retail food court/restaurant at the student center that also houses a Chick-fil-A. In fact, I was the manager there when the decision was made to bring CFA into the fold, it was the first outside franchise on campus. What a huge growth experience that was for me personally and professionally! When retail expanded to East Campus with a new food court/restaurant, I was asked to go there and start it up. It has been a small but growing operation since it's inception. They threw the C-stores and the Faculty Center in for good measure, and it has all kept me very very busy. And I have had a great time.

But now the original location is expanding again. I thrive on new things, growth, expansion. It will be a promotion for me as well. This was not handed to me. I had to work hard for this opportunity. And I know it is best for me, even though it will keep me slap crazy for awhile.

A good way to get Haitian adoption and other worries out of my head for periods of time, anyway.

I will have the same boss I have now, who is pretty new. It is nice to be supported by her, and we worked together years ago, so we already have a relationship. My former boss left under duress early in the summer, and although we had a good relationship for many years, he was doing things he should not have been doing, and I knew it. He did not like that I knew it, and during his last year he tried pretty hard to throw me under the bus. It was very devious and the only thing that saved me was alot of prayer, my awareness of how the system worked (due to the amount of time I have been here) and my best friend and assistant manager Lynda, who kept me propped up when I was scared and discouraged.

The only downside to all of this is that Lynda is upset. It is hard for me to watch and I don't know how to deal with it. I am a person who thrives on change, and she is a person who doesn't like it much. So, that is where we are at. But it's not like I am going that far away. We can still see each other at work. We are still in the same department.

Another adjustment is that I will lose some of my freedoms. Because my locations were so spread out, I could just get in the van and go. It has been hard for my superiors to breath down my neck 'cause they have to catch me first! HAHA. So now my boss will be right across the hall from me. However, she is on the go herself. Alot.

I am looking forward to getting my old office back, which will be private...right now, mine is Grand Central, and that is unavoidable, but it drives me nuts sometimes. I look forward to turning in my corporate cell phone, which I have had in order to be reached all over the place. (I hope they are going to let me turn it in, having 2 cells pretty much sucks, in my opinion) So aside from a raise and new challenges, these are some extra perks.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, I will be bringing my little girls home :) I hope soon.