A Little Good News (I Hope) and A Little About My Husband

Ok, first of all, *knock on wood*.  I don't want to jinx this!

A few days ago, my husband came home from work and said, "I'm going to tell you something, and I don't want you to get too excited or start planning for anything."  Well, I prepared myself for the worst. He didn't give any sign as to whether it was good news or bad, so I waited.

A little bit  lot of a backstory here.  My husband, Christopher, worked for KMart for 14 years.  He did almost everything there was to do in that store, from starting out as Christmas help in toys to overnight supervisor, to stockroom asst manager, to stockroom manager to dept manager over all sorts of depts. He was laid off in January 2006 when they restructured, and found a new job with Blockbuster as an assistant manager. He was with them for a few months when he had his heart attack in January 2007. (I kind of hate January now.)  He realized a large part of it was the stress he was under at work, so he quit. He went back to Kmart and applied and was hired immediately for the stockroom. They had a new store manager by then, and the one who had laid him off had actually been demoted and moved to another store... but anyway the new manager immediately saw that Christopher had potential, and made him a key carrier. Within a few months, he was the new Assistant Manager. The store has gone through 4 Store Managers since then, but Christopher just kept on doing his job, and doing it well. One store manager was getting ready to retire and was going to recommend Christopher to be given the store when he did so in a year or so. Unfortunately, that manager was transferred to another store when districts got rearranged, and a new manager was brought in when she moved from New York. She was nice and fair, so at least that was good. Christopher was still going to look into the management training program the company has and see if he could get into one of the classes. However, the new district manager was horrible. He told me she reminded him so much of Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter, in looks and personality. Basically, just mean.  He'd had glowing reviews from every previous manager and even the previous district manager had respected him when he basically rant the store alone before the new manager was brought in... but not this new one.  In the end, it was obvious she wanted her own team of people running the store.  She fired my husband, and she harassed the new manager, who had just moved here from NY for the job, so badly that she tearfully announced her retirement to the whole store after a phone call with the DM.  Christopher had been the Asst Manager there for 6 1/2 years. 

He was unemployed for 4 months, during which he did look for jobs, but we were doing okay with my income and his unemployment and money we got when his grandfather passed away. So he was able to wait until he found the right job. Fortunately, another company had also been doing some restructuring, and one store's store manager was going to be made a district manager over a whole new district they were creating, and the store's asst manager was going to be store manager for a different store.  So the store desperately needed someone.  So, Christopher got a call and an interview and became the assistant manager of a local discount retail store (not sure if I've mentioned it before, but I'd rather not say it here and jinx it more). It's not in our town, but about 30 minutes away in a rural area (yeah even more rural then here). The DM who hired him, said the store still needed a store manager and that if Christopher did well, he saw him likely getting the store manager position in a couple months. That made the big paycut for his current position really worth it. we just had to hang in there and hope it did happen. It was all sort of up in the air though, because the restructuring was still going on, and the DM who hired him was no longer his DM after just a week, and we didn't know how the new one would feel.

Which brings us to the conversation I started off with...  The new District Manager had called Christopher at work and informed him that the lady who had been the store manager of his store before was finally officially a new District Manager. It was finalized in the system, so finally he could get a new store manager for the store.. and was Christopher interested?  He of course said he was, and the DM said he'd be in soon to talk to him further about it.

YYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I couldn't jump up and down and go crazy with cheering when he told me because he said not to over react. So, that's why I'm telling you all LOL!  It's certainly not a done deal yet, but it sure sounds promising! OMG I am so excited and proud of him!  I told y'all that backstory to give you an idea of the experience he has going into this job.  In fact, I told Christopher that in this new company I can not only see him as being a store manager, but also going on to be a district or regional manager. I'll support him in whatever he wants, even if it's just managing his store. I know he'll be excellent at it.

I will let y'all know if/when we get word that it's official. Of course, it does seem in this company that things like that take some time, so who knows.

Have a great day y'all!