My stint at Borders, even though I liked it, only lasted about six months. After that, I practiced more job promiscuity at the local factory outlet mall, working at a couple of different shoe stores (both specialized in orthopedic shoes) and at another bookstore. Then I worked at a dry cleaner’s, where I sat alone, in the back, scrubbing ring-around-the collar out of men’s shirts and separating them by starch level.
The fact that I quit my job at Borders in no way diminishes how much I learned from it.
I worked at a restaurant for about a day, and that I really hated. I wasn’t exactly a people person, and that’s what working in a restaurant is: people, nonstop people. I wondered, if I was going to make the same amount of money no matter what I did, then what should I choose to do? To be a bumbling server (I say that only because I was a major bumbler), get stressed out over spilled milk, or sit here in this dimly lit Dexter shoes? I’d rather work at Dexter and read a book. Even though I always worked hard as an employee, all of these jobs still only used about 15 percent of my brain (max) and each job I loved eventually grew boring. It felt a bit like Groundhog Day—every day was the same, no matter how much I’d done the day before. And with no Bill Murray? No thanks. At this point in my litany of shitty jobs, I’d never reaped what I’d sown, and that, I eventually learned, is the only way I can stay engaged.
Fight the Boredom
To be, in a word, unborable. . . . It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.
—David Foster Wallace
This was the phase of my life where I chose jobs because they were really easy. The last job I had before Nasty Gal, I was a campus safety host in the lobby of the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. I quite literally did nothing, and that was the entire reason I took the job. Hell no would I be making a difference or earning my keep! I wanted to be a cheaper version of a security guard, dick around on MySpace, and periodically yell, “Hey, you need to sign in!” As soon as my shift began, I was waiting for it to end. I realize how lame this sounds now. And guess what? It was lame. It makes me sad to remember how apathetic I was. I hope that I made some of these mistakes so that you, dear hardworking #GIRLBOSS in the making, won’t have to.
What I know now is that nothing is universally boring—what’s boring to you could be totally engaging to someone else. If you’re bored and hating it, it’s a big sign that you’re most likely just in the wrong place. There are some folks who just straight up hate work, no matter what kind of work it is. This book just isn’t for those people. Unless you’re born the child of a billionaire, work is something we all have to do. So hell, make it something you enjoy, because bored is not a #GIRLBOSS’s natural state. At all.
Unless you’re powered by an ungodly amount of spite, it’s pretty impossible to succeed while doing something that you genuinely hate. Personally, I am horrible at public relations. There’s a whole art to PR that’s being you on demand and saying the right thing at the right time, and that I’ve never mastered. A good publicist has to be capable of selling while still being genuine and building relationships. Kaitlyn, Nasty Gal’s PR director, loves her job, and she’s great at it. She’s a total extrovert and loves people, so she thrives on being in constant contact with everyone all the time. I jokingly refer to the financial side of the business as “the boring stuff,” but that’s only because it’s boring to me. Our CFO loves to look at graphs and spreadsheets and all sorts of acronyms that I am only just beginning to understand. That’s fantastic, because if there weren’t people who found finance or international logistics fascinating, none of us at Nasty Gal would have a job.
Using my love for photography to explore the oppressive nature of time.
My biggest weakness as an employee (and also as a friend) was my incurable inability to be on time. Time may be the one thing in the world I can’t negotiate, no matter how hard I’ve tried. It plagues me to this day. I was always grumpy about the fact that I had to take twenty minutes out of my personal life to get to work, considering those twenty minutes were unpaid. To squeeze every last moment of “my” life (as I felt they owned me during work hours), I’d leave as late as possible for work, ensuring I was pretty much always late. Sometimes being late is unavoidable (aka shit happens), but being repeatedly, predictably late is a wonderful way to let your boss know that you just don’t care about your job. No one wants to hire, or continue to employ, someone who blatantly doesn’t care.
I finally found a job at a hydroponic plant store. We jammed out to A Tribe Called Quest while I balanced the pH levels of the water. I took care of a giant banana tree that was rooted in lava rock that resembled enlarged rabbit droppings. I loved that job. After that, I did landscaping, thinking it would be good exercise to be outside, lugging hoses and a wheelbarrow around an office complex. This lasted about two weeks. Go ahead, you can laugh and wonder what I was thinking, because seriously, what was I thinking? But no matter the job, the outcome was usually the same—I got bored and quit.
Yet when I started Nasty Gal, I found that I enjoyed work and thrived on challenges. My days passed by in a happy blur because I was too busy to look at the clock. This was very different from having nothing to do but count the minutes while someone who was no smarter than me dictated eight hours of my day. I’ve always had issues with following the rules, which has made Nasty Gal the only thing I’m capable of doing.
What all of these jobs taught me is that you have to be willing to tolerate some shit you don’t like—at least for a while. This is what my parents’ generation would call “character building,” but I prefer to call it “#GIRLBOSS training.” I didn’t expect to love any of these jobs, but I learned a lot because I worked hard and grew to love things about them. Admittedly, some were way below anyone’s intelligence level. But no matter what, I approached them with a sense of tourism and experimentation. Rather than being tied to how it all worked out, I felt like I was just going to see where things went. When you approach everything as if it’s a big, fun experiment, then it’s not that big of a deal if things don’t work out. If the plan changes, that can be even better. There are secret opportunities hidden inside every failure, which I’ll get into in another chapter, but start looking now—they are everywhere!
And the shitty jobs made the good ones more meaningful. Most people don’t land their dream job right out of the gate, which means we all have to start somewhere. You’ll appreciate your amazing career so much more when you look back at your not-so-amazing jobs in the past, and hopefully realize that you learned something from all of them. What I did before starting Nasty Gal gave me perspective and a diversity of experience, which for me was as important as everything that I’ve done since. It took me a while to recognize this, though, because I wanted a Chutes and Ladders experience with only ladders and no chutes. I was looking for something that would pay me to do nothing and still get ahead in life, and that, my friends, just does not exist (unless you’re Paris Hilton, who I’m not sure is actually ahead in any way, especially when it comes to fashion).