At this time in my London adventure I was employed at the London flagship GAP store on Oxford Street. I was on the mens floor which was a good experience, it just kind of sucked being underground all day, I felt like some form of burrowing animal. I don't know I am weird like that, I need natural light in order to function normally. There were some really great times, I worked with some really great people and met some pretty nice guys who would make shifts a lot more enjoyable. But there were also some pretty dirt rotten times. It was a valuable experience, but at the equivalent to $10 an hour it really wasn't worth the mind-numbingly boring tedious hours spent repetitively folding and hanging up pretty ugly clothing.
The only item of clothing I really liked and eventually bought which me and boyfriend now share/ it generally moves between houses a lot.
For about 4 of the 8 weeks I worked there I was known on every document that had our names on it as "Arica".
Kicking back at Joe & the Juice on my break replying to essay fb messages from friends back home. It became a bit of a cycle during my 32 hour weeks. Tube- Work - Joe & the Juice - Work - Tube - Sleep.
"GOD IS THE DEVIL, HE WILL EAT YO SOUL, YOU MUST PROCLAIM, SAVE YOURSELVES..." yada yada yada
Still don't know what they were on about, saw them about 4 times during my time working on Oxford Street.
I did two overnights in a row whilst working at GAP. It was near the end of my stay in London so I figured why not, whats the worst that could happen? I will go back to Australian time? We spent the two nights rearranging the whole store. First night was women's and the second night was men's. Up until about 2am Lola (Below) and I spent the time folding and discussing important world issues in terrible Russian accents and doing other ridiculous things. At about 3 when we had a break we all started to crash.
We pulled through our first night ok and came out of GAP onto an empty Oxford Street at 7am. It was eerily empty. And my eyes had bags halfway down my face at this time.
On the walk home I passed this house and decided to take a photo of the filth. I kid you not it stayed like this for about 4 weeks.
This was the completely finished Women's floor. The second night we were tackling the men's floor.
On our break at 3am we went to McDonald's where this charming little illustration was on the donation box, how sweet.
I am not even going to bother describing the second night because it was horrible. Everyone who had worked the first night was back for the second night and I don't think any of us where functioning at full capacity. The above photo was taken at 7am, both the men and women's floors had been rearranged and made to look pretty and all the staff had been transformed into zombies. But to be fair it was an experience and I got some training in visual merchandising which was pretty great.
These photos were taken on break at work one day. The sky was actually completely blue. That is how rare it was that I actually took a photo of it. And the great part was that this was in between an 8 hour shift during the better part of the day. Such a waste.
Cheers GAP, I had a blast working below minimum wage.
With love from London
xx
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