My First Job

Morning, lovelies!

Just a quickie to try and catch up with the Blog Every Day in May challenge, as I'm running a day behind! I posted about pets yesterday but I also need to post about my first job!

OK so I already mentioned that I grew up in a pet shop, so obviously I worked in there at weekends once I was old enough to help out, but that wasn't paid. I also did a paper round for a while, but my first PROPER job was working in Boots the Chemist! I started as a Saturday girl, working on the make up and perfume counters. Looking back, this is probably where my addiction to make up started! We got ~20% discount on everything and also we were allowed to buy any spare/discontinued/damaged testers we wanted for cheap. My first make up stash consisted of lots of high end testers, wish I still had them all!

I worked with the make up for several years, selling both drugstore/cheapy make up and also some higher end products. There was Elizabeth Arden, Revlon, Ultima II, Estee Lauder, No 7, Dior and Clarins.

Not the store I worked in, but it looked a lot like this (just a bit smaller)

Being just a Saturday girl meant they wouldn't let me have proper make up training and there was always this 'them and us' thing going on between the cosmetics consultants and we lowly Saturday staff. We weren't considered good enough to actually do makeovers or help people choose make up. However it often got so busy that we ended up doing it anyway - and I had quite a few customers (especially the older ladies who tended to also be the ones buying the more expensive items) decide that they much preferred me to the consultants and there was even one lady who spent at least £50 a week on high end products, who wouldn't buy anything at all if I wasn't there! So the consultants caved in and let me do pretty much the same job as them. 

When I was at Uni my job changed and I worked in the pharmacy instead. It came in very useful for familiarising myself with pharmacology (which was relevant to my degree, Biochemistry) but I did miss the make up! Luckily I also stacked shelves in the evenings and got lots of time to play with the drugstore make up at that point, so I wasn't completely cut off even if I wasn't actually applying it to anyone's face :-p

So there you are.... the reason for my make up addiction! The one thing I don't miss is the perfume counter. It was nice smelling all the perfumes, but lots of customers insisted we spray our own wrists for them to smell (instead of their own, or those little card tester things) and by the end of the day after 9344573984573948 sprays of different perfumes I used to stink to high heaven and it wouldn't even wash off in the shower when I got home. Old ladies on the bus would say 'excuse me dear but you're wearing far too much perfume'!