As the thoughts of summer start to fill the minds of college students everywhere—no more classes, sleeping in, vacations -- one thought is constantly invading my mind: going back to my summer job working retail.

Back to the glamorous life of stocking shelves.

Back to being the picture of customer service (only the friendliest of faces are allowed).

Back to stalking customers through the store because your boss thinks he or she may be stealing.

And, my personal favorite, a return to the holy grail of uniforms—khaki pants.

So working retail isn’t that bad. I am happy and grateful that I even have a job. The people I work with and work for are, for the most part, pretty great individuals. But, there have been some days (like in any job in customer service) that I have wanted to scream and cry and storm out of the store. Let me give you some background information before I launch into my adventures: I work for a department store-like retail chain that sells merchandise at discounted prices. I’ll let the store remain anonymous.

So let’s go back to last summer on my first day on the job:

They put me on the register my first day, which consisted of me standing creepily behind a veteran employee watching them scan items, take hangers off of clothes and chatting up customers. Oh, that’s another thing; this place does not allow customers to take the clothes hangers home with their purchases. This means that as a cashier, you must take every piece of clothing off its hanger (yes, even the teeny tiny baby clothes with the too big hanger, and the men’s button down shirts that someone just had to button up all the way).

Anyway, so there I am watching this woman ring up customers for a solid three hours (only two more to go in my shift), when my trainer screams and throws down the item she was scanning. “My tooth! AH!” Naturally, she runs away, leaving me to fend for myself against a line of customers 6 people deep. Slowly, I get through the line of irritated and annoyed customers. My trainer comes back and complains about her tooth the rest of the time while I take over her job and run the register the rest of my shift.

I worked the register for a few weeks and absolutely hated it! The slow days are the worst; time drags with no customers. One day I came into work and was approached by a manger asking me if I knew that my cash drawer was over by a few dollars. No, I had no idea, I told her. Secretly I was thinking that she should be happy; I made the company money, didn’t I? They took me off register shortly after this incident and put me in a department where I’ve been ever since.

Retail jobs are definitely not the worse of the part-time jobs out there (they aren't the best either), but they sure are interesting!