✨

Thrive

Song: Sick & Tired - Lime Garden

Working for a heartless corporation is so heavy on the soul. You've been working at Joja for nearly 2 years now, in fact, you probably were destined to. Your mom had been working there for 21 years, and as soon as she and your dad found out they would have you. "Your energy was  basically forged there when I started working as a cashier 20 years ago." You remember your mom saying in passing, hearing that made your skin crawl with them popping out 2 more babies, a means to provide slowly staggered into months and then years and decades. In the city there's not a lot of jobs you can find that pay as well as Joja does, but only if you're part of their "corporate ladder".

You were hired to work in their customer service support offices part time at 19, you didn't go to college after high school, like everyone else you knew. Your biggest regret. Maybe if I had gone i wouldn't be stuck here like Mom. Instead, you took the easy route, like you always did. Jumping job from job after a year of pouring your heart and soul into your work only to be crushed by the weight of city life. It felt like giving up joining the well-oiled corporate machine. You are comfortable with the mundane routines of your work life now but you definitely aren't thriving. The floral manager of the Joja Mart your mom worked at had no called, no showed one day out of the blue. On slotting all department responsibilities onto a random contender, which just so happened to be you. Why? Your mom, being the manager of another department in the store, volunteered you for the position. "She's always keeping the plants alive at home and loves flowers!" It seemed like a better gig than the cubicle hell you were in at the moment. You were swiftly promoted without time to consider it. On your lunch break one day you sat outside smoking looking out at the mountains, wishing you could drive off over them and leave this shitty town behind. You got a call from a Joja corp number "Hello there, this is Morris from Jojamart trying to reach (Y/N)... " Yeah, this is her" you stammered taking a drag of your cigarette. "After some consideration, we'd like to promote you to Floral manager at store 1211! We will give you all the information and start your training on Sunday at 10 am" Your eyes widened. How did I end up here...
gazing over at the mountains and taking another drag from your smoke to replace the unsettling feeling in your chest with chemical air you sigh. "Thank you I appreciate the offer, I will be there Sunday." The pay raise would be nice, at least I won't be sitting at a desk all day anymore...

You were now 21 and had been working in your new position for about 6 months. You honestly didn't mind it. Most days you were by yourself in the corner of the store, tending to the various plants they had for sale, and putting out premade floral arrangements and bouquets in buckets color coded and organized how you like. Joja had certain schematics for how they want things laid out, do you follow them? Sometimes, you think some of the rules are stupid and make the displays so unappealing to the eyes of the customers. Hey, sales have risen since you've been there so there must be something you're doing right, but you didn't care about that. You care about making people's day with a handmade arrangement, or helping them find something for their loved ones or often enough, the people they miss most in their lives.

The layout Joja has set their standards to is as follows: Orchids on two tables by the wall nearest to the front door. One table for colored orchids, purples, pinks, and yellows all sorted going down the three tiered nesting tables. Next to it, is another set of nesting tables. the display is entirely dedicated to white orchids. The wall by the orchids was shelved with colored and clear vases, for customers to grab as they please. A table in the middle of the sales floor is dedicated to cut flowers; mums, daisies, carnations, lilies, etc. All monochromatic going down the tables in sections of color. The back side of the table is for their premade bouquets from the cheapest price point in the back to the most expensive in the front. Color organization doesn't matter on the bouquet table, just the prices. A few feet next to the cuts and bouquets stands another table the foliage and blooming table. Filled with potted plants; potted tulips, azaleas, anthuriums, pathos, succulents, etc. Front and center, the first thing you see when you walk into the door are the roses, Joja's floral department's biggest money maker. The left side of the table has 10 buckets of rose bouquets hand-wrapped in shiny colored paper. In the middle is another set of nesting tables which holds the rose arrangements that are made following a recipe of specification for Jojas signature arrangements. You have no fun making these, there's no creativity to it, though you add to them anyway, despite the lecture from your boss. The floor below the middle tables islined with buckets of pre-packaged mixed rose bouquets. To the right of the table are 10 buckets of plain dozen roses all color oriented.