It seems like it's been years since I started working at the store.  In reality, as most of you know, it's only been a little over four months since I took the plunge and decided to take a position as a supervisor at a grocery store to help pay my summertime bills.  To be perfectly honest, it's really been an enjoyable time the whole way along...although very busy at times.  I've enjoyed meeting and working with new and interesting people.  I've enjoyed being very busy and having some responsibility.  I made some new friends and got to know friends I already had a lot better.  I got to learn a ton of new things that I had no idea about before, and most importantly I made quite a bit of money.  Although I wasn't exactly raking in the dough over the last four months, I did manage to make enough working at the store to allow me to break even with where I was at the end of the Spring semester.  That means that I managed to save up about three thousand dollars from my Spring stipend that I can use to put towards student loan interest payments and pay off my credit card.  At first I thought that I would be making a lot more money due to my other three little jobs, but things didn't pan out exactly as I had planned, though at no fault of my own.  Nonetheless, like I said, breaking even is perfectly fine with me.  I probably would have made a little bit extra had I not thought towards the future and had a ridiculous amount of my paycheck taken out each and every week to go towards taxes.  Since I receive a partially taxable fellowship for school, I knew that I needed to be paying into taxes as much as I could afford to.  I suppose that if you also consider the fact that I went on two separate trips up to New York, rented cars, paid bills, bought books for the coming semester, and bought wedding presents this Summer, breaking even sounds like quite a big accomplishment on a grocery store worker's salary.

Today was the day it really hit everyone at the store that I as actually going to be leaving.  After a month long search, they finally found someone with the patience and availability to take over for my position.  I'm glad that they found someone in house who I already know since it's going to be my job to take care of the training.  All the managers in the store came up to me today asking if there was any chance that I could stay on and one even said that everyone in the store had voted, and they had decided that I can't leave.  It was really a nice sentiment to hear all these kind things from everyone and to know that I'm wanted and that I've done a good job in the short time that I've worked at the store.  Although I thought that my schedule would be calming down in the last few days that I'm working, I found out today that this is far from what is really happening.  My boss asked me today before making the schedule for next week if I would be willing to work full eight hour shifts from tomorrow until I have my last day so that I could get things in order and start training my replacement.  Of course I have no problem with doing so and still making as much extra money as I can.  With my fellowship payment hitting my bank account at the end of next week, this extra little bit that I'll earn towards the end of my time at the store is just icing on the cake.  After I had figured things out with my boss, I had one of the other managers in the store approach me to ask if I would be willing to cover some shifts for her over the next week.  I've worked on many occasions in her department, and when she is in a pinch for extra help, she always comes to ask me.  Of course I don't know how to say no, so I said that I would be glad to work one night for her before I leave and move on to bigger and better things...or at least things that are the reason that I moved here in the first place.