After I graduated college back in May of 2016, I struggled to find work. Of course, some people have asked me why I didn't ask my alma mater for help with job placement. Well, when your alma mater closes one week after you graduate, that is impossible! In fact, Dowling College lost its accreditation. $45,000 down the drain is sometimes how I feel towards this former learning institution.

I am still friends with some of the former employees of the institution that completely f*cked them over too! News and all medias lie, I have come to discover numerous times. These are ideas for another article... I want to talk about leaving my job.

Three months after I graduated from college I started working at Savers, a retail thrift store. I still work there. Eventually, I landed a job as a custom framer in another retail store. So I gave Savers my two-weeks' notice and they never took me off payroll which I found out later on.

I worked in this new retail store for all of two-and-a-half months before I just up and left. When I was interviewed for the position at this store I was told my hours would be 11-7 a.m. and that I would be working three-to-four days per week. I accepted this because the pay was $1.00 more than I was making at Savers.

So, I'm working at this new retail store and I was trained by a fellow employee who also trained the frame shop manager who was hired the same time I was. The training from the employee was good but my hours were one day the first week, two days the next week, so nothing that I learned stuck with me and I was always floundering away asking for help from others when I didn't understand something. Another thing that really got me infuriated was the fact that "full-time shifts" at this place of employment were only four-and-a-half hours any one day.

Eventually, my coworkers got annoyed because I was confused on certain things. The store manager got annoyed at me for asking questions. (I think the only good thing that came from me working at this place was the sales I did somehow make there. I can't say how much the sales were because I'm not allowed and it would be unethical). The only one that didn't give me an issue when I asked questions was the frame shop manager himself. He was a good manager. Still, on top of the issues among certain employees, the customers got to me more so than usual. I guess it's because I couldn't always answer their questions. How can you when you don't know an answer to something yourself and they have no patience to let you figure it out? Now in retail, customers are always going to act like assholes to an employee. It's rare that customers will treat retail employees with any shred of human decency. Human nature is a beast and retail employees get the brunt end of everything in this regard.

At Savers, the customers are mostly jerks there too (there are some decent ones and I appreciate those people immensely), but the employees and management make up for that since most of us are looking out for one another. Well, this is my experience, I haven't experienced anything but the sense of unity although there are other things I won't mention here. Not the case at the other place of employment.

I don't regret leaving my former place of employment although it was a good starting point in an art career. Now, I have more time to make more of my own art and sell that. I own a start up publishing company and I can write even more books now. I still work part time at Savers, and I do have a better job lined up as a teaching assistant in BOCES schools throughout Suffolk County. Needless to say, what one person may think is stupid, may be another person's move of strategy.

And I really do think most people need to speak up and say that 4 and a 1/2 hours a shift does't cover anything and should not be accepted. Unless, you're a student and are only supposed to be part time and just starting in the workforce. But when you're a college graduate, with loans to pay back and rent you need to pay every month, things do add up.