A Birthday to Remember
Well, well, well... This past Friday was most definitely a wonderful occasion here at Southgate Coins. Why, you ask? Because it was my birthday celebration - why else?! To be honest, I actually turned 19 on the 19th; but coincidentally that was one of the few Saturdays a year that Southgate was closed for inventory! What is a girl to do?
In any case, everyone here at the store decided that they would celebrate my birthday a day early; and who am I to complain? When I walked in that morning, everything seemed normal until I got to the back end of the store. As I turned the corner to get to my desk, there was Amy on my left wishing me a happy birthday! I was a little bit taken aback, but when I turned around to wish Marie a good morning, I paused and realized that the whole backroom was decorated with birthday banners and a big helium balloon! How neat! I didn’t expect any of that in the least. Every other job that I’ve worked at has just told me “Happy birthday,” but here at Southgate they actually made a spectacle of it!
Throughout the day, work was pretty much the same. We celebrated a yummy Free-Lunch-Friday, but that is always a special occasion to look forward to at the end of the week. However the closer to closing time it got, I could tell that something fishy was going on. For instance, Amy made it apparent that all the cleaning items for the week (that is normally done on Saturdays) had to be done before we closed that day because we wouldn’t have time to do it Saturday. Well... That’s cool I guess. I can tough it up, get all the cleaning done myself before close; and then I’d get to go home to a nice, long birthday weekend. So, off to cleaning I went. And while I was polishing our beautiful wood furnishings around the store, all of a sudden the normal store music went silent... The next thing I knew the Beatle’s song "Birthday" was blaring over our surround sound speakers. At first I thought Rusty was playing around with the speaker system since there weren’t any customers in the store, and then I heard the lyrics: "You say it’s your birthday..." I just started to smile... That’s all I could do.
Next thing I knew, I was being ushered into the back where a completely lit-up birthday cake was waiting for me to blow out its candles. I was so surprised! I thought Amy was going to work me until close doing not too fun cleaning chores; but this was just wonderful; and much better then washing the floors! I blew out all the candles (in one try, I might add) and then there were pictures... the blowing of noise makers... and the eating of the perfectly decorated chocolate cake with Hershey’s Cookies and Cream icing... and so on. It was awesome.
I then got to open my presents, and I was so pleased with what Rusty and Marie had gotten me. I’ve only been here a couple of months, and yet somehow they knew enough about me to get me some great and thoughtful gifts. This included: some Swiss chocolates, (c’mon, who can refuse chocolate??), the movie Just Like Heaven with Reese Witherspoon, a CD of Mary Chapin Carpenter, as well as Sweet Pea lotion and body wash from Bath and Body Works.
All in all, I was definitely not expecting the people from my new job to cater to me like they did. They got to know me so well in such a short amount of time, and I know the only reason that is so, is because they actually care about their employees. I have never before felt so welcomed into a job, and so cared for. Since most of my family lives 400 miles south of here, in Las Vegas, the gang here at Southgate really made this birthday away from home something worth remembering.
So, thank you Rusty, Marie, and Amy. You guys really made this a special occasion for me. I really appreciated it. This is my first birthday away from my family, and I am so happy that I got to share it with you guys. I can’t thank you enough. Happy birthday to me!
-Maya