A Day for The Ages

 Day 1 at Kohl’s is in the books and while it was a new beginning, it felt like something out of the past.

Specifically, it made me feel like a teenager, when I was in my 20s, and OK, every bit of 53. As I thought, I started out working the loading docks.

It harkened back to teenage days jn the Navy aboard USS Bunker Hill (CG-52), as a junior sailor tasked to a working party. Walking onto the dock at 6 a.m. there was a group of people rallying together to clear a truck of merchandise. It wasn’t necessarily consistently as heavy as loading stores, but it had the same feel.

Yes, I wrote 6 a.m. Honestly, I wasn’t all that excited when my alarm went off at 5 as I was in the throes of the best sleep I’ve had in some time.

After the Navy, beginning at 23 years old, my summer job for the first few years of college was as a mover, humping boxes and more in-and-out of houses. The feel of unloading the truck, and the sweat it produced, was replicated to a degree.

And of course by the end of the six-hour shift I felt every bit my age, making it a two-aspirin day to relieve my aching knee and sore back.

I also worked retail in my 20s, but nowhere to the scale of this. It’s hard to compare a small photo developing shop with a behemoth superstore. Just to get a small glimpse into what goes into the makings of the day-to-day operation and the number of people it takes is amazing.

For now, I’ll just keep trucking.