After 8 years with The Home Depot, navigating through the aisles of the Big Orange Box from temporary cashier to assistant store manager, Collin B finally cut the tape. They say that retail is soul-crushing. And at times they're right. The missed weekend excursions to Utah or Montana or to float the Rio Grande, Thanksgiving dinners usurped by the Blackest of Fridays, College Gameday presented by The Home Depot taunting him before his shifts scheduled to start precisely at the same time as Michigan football kicked off. And of course there were some unpleasant customers along the way. What they don't say though, the sayers of these things, is that you'll learn that you're not shy after all, and that you're a natural leader, and that anyone and everyone-even the cashier at The Home Depot-is on the cusp of making or breaking someone else's happiness at any given moment. Retail taught Collin mountains about himself and about the intricacies of human interaction that will stay with him in all that he does.
So, he didn't quit The Home Depot because it was retail. He moved on from The Home Depot because he has an intense need to help, to inspire, to teach, and to communicate with others-but particularly to do so through written word. He moved on because selling his time to The Home Depot was not his calling. Instead, he's chosen to sell his mind by way of copy writing, web content writing, article and blog writing, as well as editing and proofreading.