By Leanne Zheng, staff writer
Last year in March, we were hit unexpectedly with a global pandemic. In the midst of all of this, I turned 16, the minimum age requirement for most jobs in San Francisco. With staying at home for 3 months and counting, I was ready to go back to my normal life and the only way for me to get out of the house and keep myself busy was to get a job.
My job hunt started back in July of 2020. Throughout this whole process of trying to obtain a job, both my parents strongly objected to me getting a job during the pandemic with my safety and everything. I was looking up jobs on google, indeed, and calling into different businesses near my house looking for job openings. I made a list of openings and put them all on a document with a little overview of the job description so that I could later refer back to it. Target, Starbucks, Boba Guys, and GongCha were my top picks.
The first job that I applied to was Target, I applied to multiple locations including the one in Downtown, Stonestown, Tanforan and Ocean but was met with failure as they rejected my application very soon after. I later then applied to Starbucks near my house and heard no news back for over a week. Therefore I decided to call in to follow up on my application and earned myself my first real interview. With my interview being only a few days away, I practiced common interview questions with my family and friends over and over again. Before I knew it, it was the day of the interview.
The interview took place at Microsoft Meeting and was right after school. After hopping onto the meeting 15 minutes before the meeting and started practicing my answers. The time came and the interviewer came on and introduced himself as the manager. As time passed, the more comfortable I got and the less nervous I was. Before I knew it, my first official interview was over. The interview went so well, I thought that for sure that the job was mine so I didn’t bother applying to other jobs for the time being. Until 2 weeks later, when they emailed me with the bad news. They said that I was a great candidate but there was someone with a little more experience than me.
After being given the bad news, I decided to reapply to Target at a different location this time. I also applied to Gong Cha through Craigslist and Journeys through their official website. I first heard back from Gong Cha after sending them a follow up email and was offered an interview opportunity. With the pandemic and everything, I was not sure whether the interview was in person or virtual so I sent an email asking about the interview and never received a response therefore I never got to do the interview.
When I thought all hope was lost, I received an email Saturday morning from Target asking for a virtual interview and I was so happy and relieved. Target interviews weren’t actually an interview, they sent you a list of questions for you to answer and you film a video answering them and send them to Target by email and they will contact you if they wanted to further interview you and I was given 3 days to film my responses.
That same morning, I received a call from Journeys asking if I was still interested in the position and if I could come in for an interview the next morning. Without even thinking, I said yes. Stunned and in disbelief, I stared at my phone not knowing what to do next. I called up and told everybody I could think of and told them the good news. My parents did not like the idea of this at all and told me that I could go to the interview to get experience but to not expect to actually work there and I did not disagree with them about that as I had no expectations of actually getting the job.
After letting the news sink in, it was time to do some preparation for the interview with Journeys the next day. I went through my whole house looking for something appropriate to wear to the interview but I couldn’t find anything that I liked and there wasn’t enough time to go out and buy something. After a lot of facetime calls I settled on a white knitted sweater and some black jeans. That same night, I went over to my aunt and uncle’s house to get help preparing for the interview. I rehearsed the questions over and over again until I could basically answer them in my sleep.
The next morning came and with the interview being two hours away, I started getting dressed and cleaning myself up and printing out copies of my resume. I got into my dad’s car and we headed down to Journey’s, I had left the house earlier so that I could arrive 20 minutes prior to the interview just in case something were to happen or go wrong. I called up my friend while in the car telling her to meet me at the corner of the street before the interview so that I could practice one last time before the real deal.
Standing outside the closed gate for over 20 minutes, I was starting to get worried and nervous. No one came in or out of the gate for another 20 minutes until the manager and the sales lead came up to me on their way out to Starbucks asking if I was Leanne. They then asked me to wait for another 5 minutes while they ran to Starbucks.
