I resigned from Dollar Tree.

In September, I accepted a Team Lead role at Bass Pro Shops: a shift supervisor role, one level below management. I had every intention of working 4-hour shifts at Dollar Tree on my full days off. Yeah, I need the money, but my motivation was really about how much I loved it: the customers and the people that I worked with. Also: I have no idea what to do with my time not working on full days off and having closing shifts where I have half a day to myself. That’s why I thought short shifts at Dollar Tree on my full days off would work: I used to work on a computer for 60+ hours/week. But apparently, 40 hours on a retail shift is the equivalent physical stress of 60 hours on a computer.

Tuesday, October 6. First day at Bass Pro.

Friday, October 9. Getting ready for my closing shift at Dollar Tree. I had felt just fine all day. But as I got ready to get in the shower, I felt the head pain. I saw the vision changes. I felt the pre-seizure “nausea”: a nauseous sensation in my throat, under my jaw line – not in my stomach. That is latent seizure activity. It was only two hours before my shift started, but I knew I had to call out. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stay conscious for that 5:30-10pm shift. Thankfully, no seizure.

Saturday, October 10. I had to work at Bass Pro. But I had my Mom come pick me up when that shift was over because I knew I was starting to struggle and I couldn’t drive. She drove me to work the next day, October 11, and I was fine – drove home. I got home at 7:30pm and went straight to bed.

Monday, October 12. I woke up that morning, exhausted. I had to be at Dollar Tree at 12:30pm. The changes in my cognitive function started about 9am: couldn’t complete a sentence, couldn’t follow along to a conversation without lip-reading. About 10am, I started to get dizzy: vertigo. I needed to get in the shower at 11am but I was afraid of falling. There are visual indicators of a seizure; for example, my lips turn purple. I asked my Mom what she thought, and she said, “You look just fine now, but you can’t go to work if you can’t follow along to a conversation. You know you’ll have a seizure if you try to work.”

I went back in my room and started to cry. I had promised my Dollar Tree store manager, Mark, that I would continue to work the schedules that he had already published. But this was the second shift in a row that I was calling off at the last minute. And he was on PTO (paid time off) for the first time in over a year because his stock manager had been on a leave of absence. Basically, Mark had been doing two roles for 12 months. He always knew about my new job at Bass Pro and that I was limiting my schedule at Dollar Tree, but I was fully quitting less than 24 hours into his well-earned vacation.

At 11am, I called the store and told the manager on duty - the second in command, the stock manager who just came back from that 12-month leave of absence - that I couldn’t come in that day and that I needed to resign, effective immediately. I wouldn’t be able to fulfill the other three shifts that I was scheduled for that week. I couldn’t hold back my tears, but this guy doesn’t know me. “So you aren’t coming in at all this week?” I said, “No, I’m sorry. I can’t. I don’t want to quit this way…” and he cut me off and said, “I’ve only got an hour to find someone so I need to go” and hung up.

Yeah, it was insensitive. But the reality is that it was 11am. His morning cashier was only scheduled until 12:30pm, which is when I was supposed to arrive, and there’s only one manager and one associate on staff at any time. So in an hour, he would be completely alone if that morning cashier couldn’t stay and he couldn’t find a replacement.

But that’s the lesson that I knew I needed to learn, as acknowledged in my August 14 post: to admit when there’s something that I can’t do, something that I can’t handle. Regardless of how that might impact someone else - because I need to learn how to prioritize myself. And if I didn’t have the epilepsy and the lack of sleep wasn’t a trigger for them and if I hadn’t learned the indicators of latent activity, I would have continued to work both jobs even though I was mentally and physically exhausted. Seven days a week. Because I need that $150/week.

But I still cried until I fell asleep at 2pm. They didn’t deserve to lose a staff member that way; it’s disrespectful. And it’s always going to bother me whenever I have to attribute anything to my disability because it’s completely outside of my control. I hadn’t taken any extra pills or sleep aids, but I slept straight through until the next morning: when my alarm went off at 5am to get ready for my next shift at Bass Pro.

I formally resigned from Dollar Tree yesterday.

In between work and sleeping over the last week, I typed up the formal resignation. “I cannot provide the reliability that Dollar Tree requires for standard operations.”

But I really felt like I needed to share how much I loved this role and didn’t want to leave. I called out the people on staff who created a culture of efficiency and customer service, who built strong relationships with customers. How much I appreciated Mark, and the talent that I see in him. I wrote on the letter, “Share this with Ken” – the district manager, who said that I was even over-qualified for his role: the conversation that prompted my LinkedIn post on August 27.

When I went to drop off that resignation, I couldn’t stop crying. Especially since the manager on duty was the assistant manager that I always worked with, and the cashier covering my shift was the same cashier who rang me up the first time that I walked into Dollar Tree: who called up Mark when I asked about working there, and Mark said, “Apply on our corporate site and I’ll hire you immediately.”

And when I dropped that off yesterday, I added another hand-written note on it at the last minute, when I was already in the store: “I left something that I loved for an extra $6/hour.”

I also left a note for my coworkers that I pinned to the bulletin board next to the schedules.

Quotes from my resignation letters to my supervisor and my coworkers:

After my displacement from Wells Fargo after 11 years, this was the environment that I needed to remember life outside the cubicle.

I needed inside jokes about Marlboro White. I needed to throw those nasty squishies at someone. And I needed to see that America really does sell products targeted to “peri-menopause.” As someone in peri-menopause, if you feel like you need one of those – go refill the soda cooler. That wipe in the beauty aisle isn’t going to help. Or if you really need to, sit in the ice cooler – I’ve done that before. And I’m going to miss that because Bass Pro doesn’t sell ice.

I’ve gotten to know the middle-schoolers and the high school students who come in every day for candy and fake eyelashes. I have helped customers with disabilities, daughters helping their parents with dementia, customers who are new to using an EBT card, customers who can’t afford all the groceries they selected and have to make the difficult decision about what they remove and what they keep. This isn’t just a job: this is seriously a service to the community, especially the community who has never had to struggle to make ends meet before. I have been there, but it’s been 20 years. But I had to be reminded what that was like.

I don’t want to leave.

I don’t want to leave you. And I don’t want to leave the service that a place like Dollar Tree provides to the community.

More than anything, I don’t want to leave without reminding you how valuable you are. You might be the only person they talk to that day. You might be the only person that asks how they’re doing. And I still have a crush on Thomas who buys cinnamon rolls every day and apparently fishes at Tilles Park; Pam knows who I’m talking about.

And the last three months of happiness had nothing to do with money or a career but had everything to do with one guy taking a risk on me.

He could have looked at my application and thought, “Jesus, she won’t stay long.” But: I talked to him first.

And I didn’t stay long, but: I wanted to. It just didn’t pay enough.

It’s not the first time someone took a risk on me.

In 2011, my son was entering school and I needed stable hours. I had spent years in retail but I always worked marketing at the same time on the side, and that’s where my high school and college studies focused. I had the resume to accept an entry-level job at a small business. I don’t remember that job search process or how much time and effort it took. But I remember sitting in the office of a small business owner for my interview and talking about his journey, how he’s grown his company, and his passion for recruiting young people to the trades. I don’t remember him asking me any real questions. I remember having a conversation with a guy who wanted to secure new contracts while pivoting the perception of the electrical contracting industry and make a difference outside of his own business growth.

Essentially, I also wanted to “pursue a new contract” outside of my recent experience. I could relate to the industry because everyone around me kept telling me that retail “wasn’t a real job” just like an electrician - and how many people still look upon the trades as someone who just wasn’t smart enough to do anything else.

If he hadn’t taken a risk on me, I have no idea where I would be today.