What is every teenage kid’s biggest dream growing up?

Yea, getting your permit is cool. Now you’re able to run errands for your parents. But the real answer is working in the mall.

EVERY high school student at one point or another, gathered all of their friends and took a trip to the mall to fill out applications. A large portion of us probably never got the job or even a call for the interview, so you settled for handing out samples at Charlie’s. But hey, at least you work in the mall.

My aspirations were quite the same.

It may not look like it, but I was always that one kid that was younger than everyone else. Having that awkward early September birthday made me that kid that was a 13-year-old freshman and graduated at 17-years-old. So while all my friends were able to work from the end of sophomore year, I was restricted to the summer going into my junior year. But nevertheless, I was determined to land that summer dream job at the mall.

Now like many of you may probably know, finding a job at 16 isn’t the easiest thing to do. You have to beg your mom to drop you off at the mall or scrounge up some change to catch the city bus. Or, if you have a mom like mine, during casual shopping trips you’ll hear her ask the cashier, “Are you guys hiring, my son needs a job?” THE MOST EMBARRASSING way to be introduced to a possible future co-worker. But it’s all out of love so you can’t complain.

Eventually all of my (and my mom’s) hard work paid off and I landed a job at Hollister.

Bright eyed and bushy tailed I quickly used my employee discount and picked out my uniform.

I finally had my mall job.

Knowing that I was one of many employees, I anticipated not getting much hours but being able to brag to my friends was going to make it all worth it. Every chance I was able to make it to the mall I’d run into the store hoping that maybe this week I would be on the schedule, just to be let down time and time again. To this day, that picture you see above is the only time I ever wore a Hollister uniform.

I NEVER WORKED ONE SHIFT AT HOLLISTER.

Now mind you, the first time I interviewed for the job I applied for the position of “impact team member” and was denied. So I went back and spoke to the manager to figure out why I didn’t get the position and he said and I quote “Apply again but this time apply to be a model, you’ll have a better chance.” So with this information in hand and realizing that I might have over-dressed originally (I wore a dress shirt slacks and church shoes), I applied again and got the job.

All of this for nothing.

I eventually lost all hope for ever being put on schedule and decided to wait until I was 18 before I applied for another job.

Fast forward four summers later, I am back home from college for summer vacation. I finally have a car and am looking forward to landing a job that I can transfer back to Tallahassee for the upcoming fall semester.

If you know me then you know what the most ideal job was.

Foot Locker.

Yes, the perfect job to feed my newfound sneaker addiction. This one went a little smoother though. I pestered my future manager so much that he had no choice but to give me the job. The location is in a plaza with a Publix and a Golden Crust. So when I say whenever I had to go to either one of those places, I stopped by the store, I’m not joking. I knew all of my co-workers before even putting on a uniform.

Four years later, what was my high school dream, had finally come true.

A dream that I’d struggle to wake up from.

While the discount was AMAZING and the pay kept my rent paid (barely), I realized what a conundrum retail actually was.

As a “sales associate” here are your duties:

• Deal with whatever bull the customer may have because “the customer is always right”
• Work your a** off to reach corporate goals that barely affect your pay check
• Be content with the idea of fulfilling someone else’s dream while putting yours on pause

It took some time for me to realize some of these issues. I found myself missing out on broadcast journalism opportunities because “I had to work.” While my colleagues advanced themselves within the School of Journalism I was asking “Do you need a size in those?”

I realized that I had to get my priorities in order and invest my time in things that make me happy. Too often do we forgo our actual dreams and goals just to pay bills and get by.

To this day I still work retail but with more of a sense of my role in this system. I will not allow it to consume me like many people do. I keep reminding myself that this in not forever. That with my degree in hand and my dream of being a multimedia journalist for Vice Magazine, I will never become a stagnant member of society.

So what’s your dream job?