Garment Merchandiser

It’s Saturday once again and as usual I’m waiting for 4 o’clock in the afternoon to leave the office and go to church. It’s not really same as the Catholic church you can imagine. It is actually an auditorium or a conference room inside World Vision building. I think the Catholic community and other Christian communities here in Phnom Penh usually rented it for religious gathering.



Last night I stayed up until 12 o’clock midnight to wait for our production department to finish packing all my Canada shipment to catch vessel cut-off. If you think that is too much you are wrong. Last year, a normal weekend will start from Friday at 7 o’clock in the morning and stay up until 6 o’clock in the morning the following day - Saturday (don’t worry there are break time in between). After six, go back to the dorm, take a bath, take my breakfast and go back again to the office at seven. It was really tiring and you feel very drained. My only form of relaxation is going out at 4 o’clock, go to church, eat either in Lucky or in Bistro (a Filipino restaurant), do my grocery and go back to the dorm and sleep. How do I spend my Sundays? By working. Those were our peak season. Now it has changed. I can relax more and believe me I can sleep very well. Unlike before, my body is sleeping but my mind keeps on working. The result, waking up in wee hours and a terrible eye bag in the morning. I cried a bucket of tears in those days. Because of my immaturities, I don’t know how to juggle my work and I’m having hard time to designate my responsibilities. On those darkest hours of my life, all I can hold unto are the prayers. I kept of thinking about the life of Job and it keeps me going though my spirit is really tired. I thought I was going crazy already. If my boss gave me the chance to resign, I would definitely resign and go home. I really felt guilty for every mistake I committed and just wish I would die in that very moment. I have an assistant who is helping me very well. She is very good but I’m having difficulty to let go of some my jobs. I end up with unfinished jobs and late working hours. But now I realized that I should ask her to help me more to be more effective and efficient with my job.

Being a garment merchandiser is a very challenging job especially when you are in a manufacturing set-up. You are involved in every step, from start to finish. I had been with this industry for almost 6 years now, but I still feel my knowledge is not yet enough. My emotional stability and decision making is still shaky. On technical aspect, I still have a lot of things that I need to learn. I hope that a day will come to me when I can answer my boss, ''...Sir don’t worry about it, I can handle it...’’.

I had been blogging for quite sometime now but I had never published concrete detail about my job. Well, anyways, it’s not yet late, I hope this weekend I will be able to boast about my very challenging job in a more concrete details.