I have been meaning to write a tale about my 10 years in a Flower Shop. It may not seem too important a thing to a lot of people. But, it is a very important to me and who I am.
We had serious lifestyle upheaval and I needed to find a career quickly. I needed a career fast. Something In the art field. Something I knew I could pick up quickly and be good at. Then a schedule for evening classes arrived in the mail. As I was looking through it, there was a class listed on Beginning floral arrangement being offered. Serendipitous to say the least.
That was something my Mom and I were always interested in. (I figure my Mom sent it.
Oh, yeah. Hmm. Ah, You see my Mom passed in 1971.From breast cancer.)
So, I called up and enrolled in the class. It was a 6 week class. It was fun and I found it basically easy. But, I knew I would like to find more training somewhere. Then one night during a break in class, the teacher took me aside and told me there was a flower shop owner who badly needed help. Would I be interested? Would I?! She did mention that she had told another student. I said, uh, well I will call anyway and check it out.
Anyway, the owner hired me. I worked for her three years. I learned a lot just by being able to make arrangements right off. Then she went out of business. The area where the shop was, changed her customer base. As she couldn't afford to move. She just retired. Really bad luck for the owner.
While I was working for Bobbi. I discovered that one of the Junior Colleges had a Florist Training course. Wow! I checked it out and signed up immediately. Bobbi and Berte, her friend and employee, were so gracious to work things out, so I could take the course. As most of the classes were daytime. There were other students not so fortunate.
Because I was working and taking the classes. It took me about four years to finish the course. It was kind of a let down when I was done.
After Bobbi's, I worked for a large floral shop, that was the pits driving to. 17 miles end to end traffic. One day, after having worked there for three years, I chickened out and said to my boss, I couldn't drive in that traffic anymore. I do not scare easily, really. But that day I knew, I had better change shops if I could. I did find work in a shop only 15 minutes away. At the time I thought," Talk about providence".
Even though I worked three years for that shop. The owner was a whutz. She made me crazy. I just finally had to quit, after she insisted that I deduct my bathroom time from my time card. That is illegal. The IRS sternly frowns on that.
I really liked working at the big floral shop . Because they had allowed me to develop all of my latent talent. I really wasn't sure I had. But, I was pleased at what came from my hands.
I worked as a Floral Designer for ten years. I know, 3x3=9. However I did some short time work between, and that filled in. I rather somewhat miss it.
There is a lot of turn over in the floral business. It is about the craziest business to get into out there. The owners are wacky, the help are transient, I don't even want go into the customers. But, boy do I have some stories I could tell. Three years seemed to be an average tenancy for help at a floral shop.
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This is one of the commercial arrangements I made. It is about 4ft. tall
2 comments:
Thankyou for visiting my blog & leaving me a comment. I like your floral arrangement- very nice!
I see you love dolls, so do I. I had to stop collecting them- we have so many now. I used to make my own, & loved it, but i cant lift heavy weights now, so firing them in the kiln is out.
Your horses are very nice.
Just beautiful! Arranging flowers seems like it ought to be easy, but it's not. Really it's an art, I think.
I like to use old canning jars or milk pitchers for field flowers - anything too fancy that I try to do just looks awful.
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