Dreaming of the Disney College Program

I'm excited to share that this fall I've decided to put my full efforts into applying for the Disney College Program, Spring 2014.

Believe me, I understand that the program is an opportunity for Disney to get extraordinarily cheap labor (considering we'd get paid nearly minimum wage and from that Disney pulls out their criminally expensive rent for the half of a room you are staying in on their property) and I get that they often work CP's more than 40 hours a week, every week (not unlike my current job), but I still want to do it. I've been kicking the idea around in my head for years and it turned from a "why should I?" to a "why not?" I mean really, as long as I'm at least breaking even financially and I still manage to have a good experience, what's wrong with me doing it if it'll make me happy?

With this being my last possible opportunity to do so, I'm going to spruce myself up and prepare to make the best impression that I can in the hopes that in January I'll be flying down to Florida, ready to take on Disney. I'm hoping that with all of my experience, I'll be offered a job somewhere that actually pertains to my potential future job opportunities. Here are my top choices:

Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique/Pirate League

This one is almost exactly up my alley. It combines my years of experience in sales and customer service with my almost equal time spent working with children. It also doesn't hurt that most of my sales experience has been in cosmetics, so I'd think that that would be a bonus. Basically, to play dress up with child guests and turn them into princesses, princes, and pirates. Plus, in the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, I get to be a Fairy Godmother-in-training and I get a wand that deposits glitter everywhere. What's not to love?

Merchandise

Again, puts my years in sales and customer service to good use. It's an environment that I'm already very familiar with and unlike at previous sales jobs that emphasized speed over customer service, I assume Disney will have a better appreciation for my ability to please guests and help them get exactly what they need with the treatment that they deserve. Also, I'm sure that it'd be easier to pick up extra hours here because being able to work a cach register is probably an important skill across various places in the park. Plus, on slow days, I can "shop" while I work XD

Vacation Planner

Again, sales and customer service. Unlike merchandise, however, vacation planners get to be more focused on customer service and satisfaction and while I assume upselling is still a job requirement, I imagine it's more important for park guests to have a great experience and vacation planners are vital to making that happen. This one would probably be the most useful to my potential future goals as well, since it will require levels of book keeping and customer service that translate better than customer service in retail to jobs involving guest relations.

I'm also interested in being a character attendant, a photopass photographer, working in attractions (I think I'd do marvelously on a spiel-ride), and hospitality. If I get offered a job in any one of these areas, I'd totally accept. If they offer to put me somewhere else, I'm going to have to draw hard line and decline, because these are the only areas I can see myself working so many hours over so many weeks. Just because I want to do the program, doesn't mean I'm desperate and will take anything that they will offer me. Besides, I have almost an equally as satisfying consolation prize: if I do get turned down, that means I can immediately move out to Portland, OR after receiving my degree and get started on building my life out there.

Both plans are ones that I can accept and be happy with.

The application process opens up in September, I'll be posting as I get more information and things start moving forward. I promise that this isn't going to turn into a DCP blog, I will continue to post about everything that's going on in my life, even if I do go and work for the Mouse.

Until next time,

♥ Princess Kisha ♥

Sephora and the Little Mermaid: A Tale of Bad Customer Service

Warning: This is a rant. A very thorough rant, because that's how angry I am with Sephora at the moment.

Ok, so Sephora has (had?) a negotiation with Disney that they would release a make-up line inspired by the Disney princesses, appropriately titled the Disney Princess Collection by Sephora. Each section/release of the collection was inspired by a princess, the first one being Cinderella, the second being Jasmine, and the final being Ariel.

As you can imagine, having missed out on the Cinderella collection and being unimpressed by the Jasmine collection, I was pretty excited to see what they would pull out for Ariel. Ariel isn't my favorite princess (though for a very, very long time she was), but she was by far my favorite princess represented in the collection and knew that I at least had lots of greens and blues to look forward to in the color palettes. When I got my first glimpse at the large eyeshadow palette, I was not at all disappointed:

I was looking forward to this palette. I found out about it the day after the first customer service snafu where they had an "accidental" release of a few of them to "select" VIBs, leaving lots of other VIBs and card holders irritated that they weren't notified. Sephora at one point said that it was an accident and at another point said that it was an intentional prerelease to VIBs. The erroneous information (because one of these situations has to be a lie told to somehow help cover Sephora's ass), has created a bit of a backlash, but most were satisfied knowing that it would at least get another release with more stock of the product and ample warning to everyone in July.

The good part of the few palette's to go out in the prerelease were early swatch tests and reviews from established make-up gurus. The reviews were somewhat mixed, but I was still excited. I still wanted to spend my hard-earned cash on this specific item from the collection and this item only. I immediately signed up to receive an email notification when it was back in stock back in June, and waited patiently for a month.

Then finally, that day came earlier this week. I was in class when my phone beeped at me, indicating that I had an email. Fifteen minutes later, when class was out, I saw that Sephora had emailed me about the palette being back in stock, and I immediately darted home to purchase it (which, considering my commute, took about 30 minutes). By the time I was in front of my computer and ready to order, only an hour had passed since I received my email and the palette was once again out of stock. What gives, Sephora? I looked around and saw that I definitely was not the only one. People were complaining all over their Facebook, the product page in the reviews, Reddit, Twitter, etc. It was not a cute look and Sephora simply responded to every single inquiry about an online restock with "the items will be available in your local Sephora starting in early August". This, to me, was unacceptable. Knowing full well the potential popularity of this product and the hype it has been receiving from both Sephora and it's customers, it makes no sense that they only made enough to sell to a few hundred people who managed to snag them during the hour that they were up.

The day wore on and, of course, I was still fuming about it the next day. I had been considering the potential to get one of the palettes at one of my local Sephoras (I'm pretty comfortable with the manager at the one inside JCPenney and considered giving him a call about the release date and if he'd hold one for me), but I sincerely do not want to reward Sephora for their terrible customer service and game of cat-and-mouse with the release of this collection by hunting down the palette and giving them my money anyway.

Then this morning (well, now yesterday morning) I got another email from Sephora at 7:15am. It told me that the Ariel eyeshadow palette was back in stock. When I clicked on the link, the item had been removed from the site entirely.

My mind has been made up. At least for this particular collection, Sephora will not be getting my money. As much as I can't stand ULTA, I will probably start shopping there again and I will make a point of not ALWAYS going to Sephora for all of my cosmetic needs, because they don't deserve it. I'm not boycotting the company, but I could care less how many points I have/need to get certain perks and I no longer care about being a VIB. Some might think that this is harsh, but I don't have time to be jerked around.

What do you think? Am I being too harsh? I'm interested in hearing what other people have to say about this whole thing and I hope Sephora actually addresses the issues involved at some point to the public.

*sigh* Until next time, my dears,

♥ Princess Kisha ♥