Blog #436: The End is Only the Beginning (Part 2)
- Jeffrey Snyder
- May 14, 2024
- 4 min read
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Well, it’s finally happened…on Thursday May 9th, I clocked out of Stop and Shop after 14 years of helping customers feed the moments. Now, I go through the process of change as I go from working retail to focusing full time on “Going the Distance” and my public speaking. While this was something that has been long in the making (and should have been done long ago), I can’t help but feel that there is a sense of withdrawal on my part.
Now, I say withdrawal on account that like someone who is a recovering alcoholic or who has been in a position of power for a long time, the aspect of changing your routine and habits can often be viewed as somewhat scary. Take it from me, I had been at my day job for 14 years where I would go in, do my job and get out with my weekly paycheck. However, without getting into too much detail, I was at a point where I go from being Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde for a variety of reasons related to my day job.
Yes, I get that it may seem a bit strange that I would compare two characters from a Robert Louis Stevenson novel to my day job, but there was a point where I would often just focus and anticipate what was to come at my day job. It got to a further point where it was starting to affect my mental health and for the longest time, I tried to get out of my day job but to no avail or success.
In fact, there were even days where I got so worked up from my day job, that I would often get into dark thoughts of ending it all because I would have no one to turn to or hear things that I am not expecting to hear.
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You see, I knew more that I could better than the position I was in. Being a public speaker and running a business supporting neurodivergent families and individuals is my passion where as my day job was just a job where I would get a paycheck. Unfortunately, that is often the case for a lot of neurodivergent/developmentally different individuals. Many will probably view retail jobs as the only destiny whereas the individual can do more.
That of course, is not true. While I did build plenty of good relationships at Stop & Shop of the course of my 14 years, the time for me to move on was evident. I was picking up the slack of others who had no work ethic of any kind and would constantly be bothered by people who were needy or wanted to have a conversation with me at the worst possible time. I was cleaning bathrooms, cleaning the bottle redemption center (which was nasty most of the time along with customers that were just as nasty at times) where no one else would, you name it. Plus, a lot of the people that I worked with in the past have moved onto other jobs or have since retired.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that I am a very private person and if I don’t want to talk to people, I ask people to respect my boundaries. Sure working with the public makes that nonexistent, but still there is a fine line that is often times crossed and not respected. I’ve had plenty of colleagues who simply don’t understand that I like to stay in my own lane.
Just because you work with the public it doesn’t mean that you have to be friends with everybody. In fact, one of the biggest weaknesses of my day job is the constant change of managers and supervisors thus not being able to set a constant workplace culture. I went through ten different store managers, 7 supervisors and a plethora of assistant store managers throughout my 14 years. Some of them were good, some of them were bad and some were just unbearable.
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Finally, while I consider the retail industry to be a steppingstone towards growing Going the Distance, that’s all it is when all is said and done, a steppingstone. Retail taught me about how to give the customers what they want and allowing myself to put myself in the shoes of the higher ups who are often feared because it’s “nature of the business.”
Being the son and grandson of higher ups, I know firsthand just how people feel towards them to the point where they worship higher ups like Gods and fear that their jobs are on the line. Whenever people freaked out about corporate visits, I tried to not let it get to me because if the President of Stop & Shop were to visit my store, I would have treated the President or Vice President no differently than somebody out on the streets.
As a public speaker, I consider higher ups in education and employment as my core audience because they want to learn about neurodiversity as much as the next person. Leaving my day job allows me to consider the higher ups at a company like Stop & Shop as members of that audience.
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While I know that it is a major change to leave a position of 14 years, I know that this is the best for myself and my desired career path. Sure, I’ve been through a lot in 14 years: gaining a brother-in-law and becoming an uncle; being part of a fandom; moving into my own apartment; burying two grandparents and traveling to another country, but there is always new worlds to conquer for Going the Distance and believe me, there are a lot of worlds to conquer!!
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Catch you all later!!
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