There's only one way...

I didn't want to blog about this too early on when I was overwhelmed with excitement. I landed myself a job! I now work at piercing pagoda (jewelry/piercing kiosk at the mall) as a sale's associate. Piercing ears proves to be fun. Anyway, I'm on information overload. The work day itself is no hassle to me whatsoever. I can deal with customers/piercings/restocking no problem, but when it's time for closing, ugh. There is so much to do. I'm not complaining at the mere existence of things to do, rather just the time it's taking me to learn the routine to where I don't screw something up. One part of the routine is doing a "149 count." This is basically a twice-daily count (one at open, one at close) of all gold items priced over $149.00. I did the count last night and tonight. When I counted tonight, we were minus one item. This is not good for many reasons:

1. The item has to be accounted for. If we sell an item over 149, the tag and bar code are taken off the jewelry and taped inside the inventory book so that whoever does the 149, knows it was sold.

2. ALL the jewelry is behind locked cases. This makes things very difficult for thieves. If someone steals a piece of jewelry, one is safe to assume either an employee stole it, or an employee was negligent (like retarded negligent) when showing multiple pieces to a customer, or that the employee was helping a customer steal.

3. I'm still the "new girl." I just got my own set of keys last week. This is why I'm so uneasy about the situation. I DID NOT STEAL, nor have I ever stolen anything. Although I believe I'm a person of good merit, the "new girl" status still labels me as someone who needs to be watched.

4. Whomever does the 149 count submits the count to corporate online. The submission of the 149 inventory includes the employee ID of the person who did the count. Since I was the one who counted, my ID will show and the numbers will be minus 1. This makes me paranoid that I might be blamed for the incident simply because it was my name on the count that was off.

I love this job. I love it more than any job I've had before. It just makes me so embarrassed (not to mention distressed) that I'll probably be pegged the suspicious character in this mess, and that I'll probably be "watched closely" by my new co-workers for no reason. I don't want to blame anyone, but the possibility of a coworker trying to set me up crossed my mind. I really don't think this is the case, but then again I've been screwed over and taken advantage of before.

In other news, I feel like I've been rejected by my new friends (ok, not that new). I feel like for the longest time since I've met them, that I've been in the in-crowd. When I use the term "in-crowd," I don't mean in the sense that we have an undeserved sense of superiority or coolness, simply that I found a circle of friends with whom I felt at home with. I love our little group. The four of us together makes me happy, even on days when we stay in and watch T.V.

But recently, I feel like I'm slowly being escorted out of my in-crowd. The parties where I was once a necessity, are now becoming parties in which I play the girl whom they all "forgot" to invite because surely someone else would have done so already. Knowing how this stunt works (as it's happened to me before), I say nothing. Calling attention to the "mishap" would only rekindle the social bond they shared without me. However, I do find it quite irritating and defacing when someone boldly asks "Why weren't you there?" and I simply must answer -to much of their anticipated delight- "Because I wasn't invited."

It could be that I'm overreacting. This paranoia could be imaginary, but because my instincts are sharp and my gut-feeling is usually right, I feel like this is the prelude to become strangers again. The only question I'm left with is "why?" More often than not, I'm never privileged a straight answer.