ok do you all want to hear about my first florist job?

i moved to chicago after graduating college and struggled to find work bc it was 2007-08. i had heard about this big flower shop that hired ppl f&p/t and was looking thru the want ads in the reader (free weekly paper) and saw an ad. i called and left a message. got an interview

the owner is an elderly woman, she interviews me in the break room and we mostly just talk about art. she tells me i'll be a designer. this sounds so cool.

she hires me to start after mother's day for $9/hr for 40 hours a week. one weekend day a must. no overtime allowed.

so she's a millionaire, on the board of the art institute. has a scholarship fund for saic students studying abroad. she has farmhouse/land in desplaines someone left to her, a greenhouse, two buildings with renters above the stores, and rents a building downtown. plus her condo

she would leave notes for the morning all the time. she slept in and came to the store around 1pm. she always looked through the trash to make sure you didn't throw out good flowers (she would sell bruised/half dead stuff) and yell at us (me) a lot. it was abusive & weird

we had a saying "what would marion do" & what she would have done is want you to yell at yourself before she had to do it. we had to always be working. a good way around that is to sweep and leave a pile on the floor, keep the broom and dust pan handy, in case she crept up on ya

i had no experience which is why she hired me. i scrubbed buckets and processed flowers for a year and a half before i was allowed to do design work. i spent three weeks in the basement blow drying candles to get the crystallization off of them. in january. i didn't see the sun

my first manager was awful. she hated me because i was young and had "perfect" skin (i didn't but she never actually looked at me up close) so she would tell marion i was slow and lazy. marion tried to fire me a month in. meanwhile, my coworkers aren't even working

i had no idea how i was supposed to do anything or how fast. no one trained me. and now i was going to lose a job i didn't like. lol i called in sick a lot. i was late a lot. i hated my manager so much. i eventually got a letter from marion threatening to fire me again

that's when they started sending me to the downtown store and on deliveries more. i was happier. i pleaded with the other manager to give me shifts at his store. eventually, i wasn't working at the event space shop anymore. i was "free"

the shop has been in business now for probably 50 years. she was the accountant and bought all her business partners out. she was shrewd and not a florist. even after 40 some years. she would grab your work and jostle flowers into different positions. we called it "poop hooking"

anyway sorry i made a drink and i'm cooking's some food

i worked there for five years. we had to ask for raises for ourselves and there was a science to when and how because of marion's mental health. she always said that you didn't deserve a raise, but you'd get it 2 wks later

i had health insurance and paid time off for both sick time and vacation. it helped with the fact that the most i earned there was 12.50 because marion hated me for three years. she always singled me out and would tell me how to do something the exact opposite from the day b4

i got whooping cough when i worked there most likely from black mold. the place was disgusting. we used a bath tub to soak the oasis foam for arrangements. we used toilet brushes to scrub buckets and bleach and no ventilation. we stood all day without stress mats too

but it was a fun environment to be in when she wasn't there (before noon, during the atlanta show) most of the drivers were in bands. most of us were artists and writers, performers. weirdos. gay. i made some great friends there that i'm still friends with

we hated the customers and were incredibly rude to them because they hated us. it's one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in chicago and everyone that shopped there was cheap and treated us like trash. so we never accommodated them. we always told them it was too late to order lol

there was an old lady named margie that worked there. she was from poland and would fake that she couldn't understand english when she wanted to break building rules on deliveries. she's the most fascinating person that i worked with there. she was in her 70s-80s idk

she talked about having everything stolen from her home as a child in poland. other people said she just showed up there one day and started working. marion told her to leave, she came back. eventually marion started paying her. there were signs of major trauma

she made this funny noise whenever she was upset that sounded like when mario falls to his death and a chicken crowing mixed together. margie also cut open trash bags and stepped into them, tied them on her waist, as a work apron. she ate mcdonald's most mornings

margie lived in a boarding house and spent most of her money on horror films on vhs. stubborn, single. never married. her boyfriend died tragically when she was younger and they weren't married so legally, nothing was hers. she was houseless and jobless hence showing up to work

she used to see me on the north ave bus and pretend to be asleep but after we did a lot of deliveries together, she started sitting with me until my stop, chatting the whole time. she told the same stories over and over. her eyes were icy blue. her hair white. skin wrinkled

my manager was a closeted gay man, only to his family, and he used to make a lot of inappropriate jokes at all of us. telling us certain flowers looked like our vaginas and he called me a hussy once lol he also micromanaged but i didn't care.
clear expectations >>

he used to travel to brazil with his boyfriend and have orgies and show us pictures when he came back. they'd bring a bunch of american goods to give to his boyfriends "friends" and i'm pretty sure that was how they paid for sex. air jordan's and stuff like that

i remember one time i bumped into marion with my new boyfriend and introduced her, and she said, oh another one? he was literally the 2nd bf i had while working there after 2 years. her and my manager were really bad at our names and personal lives bc they didn't care at all

everyone regularly stole product from the store. we were just sinking the place as fast as it could possibly go. my coworkers and i had "potlucks" every other week but it was a different host who supplied the food and the rest brought drinks and we rotated who hosted

we would go out dancing every other monday night and get shitcanned on free drinks, do coke on the street near the six corners, and go to a cheaper 4 am bar after the free drinks were over. we went to a burning man party on mushrooms together back in like 2010 or so

and because we were all creative types, we supported each other by going to shows and plays and openings. it was a weirdly supportive coworking environment for how oppressive and nasty our management and the owner were. i think it was that way since the beginning 40 yrs ago

one of my coworkers grew up in lincoln park in public housing. his girlfriend was a latin queen- they were both gay and totally in denial. he lost both his parents young to health problems- he got over his moms death by watching the prince live show on vhs every night & dancing

he gave me my "honorary black" title and loved to listen to lady gaga when we worked together. he also told me he said my name when he was fucking his girlfriend. which like. why would you tell me that. she hates me. i bought their baby clothes for christmas one year, a while ago

anyway there's no point to this. the job sucked most of the time but we always got cash for christmas bonuses and healthcare was awesome in 2008-2012. i was poor and struggling but that helped a lot. it's weird the place still exists. she sold the greenhouse but the rest is there

oh and we always had really weird calendars