Written by Maria Avila and Lucas Morello
Pictures by Becky Kozak and Joshua Sherman
Featured image via Mark Mozart

Once Morgan students turn 16, they choose to work at restaurants, family businesses, and most popularly, retail stores. Over the past year a remarkably high number of Morgan students have decided to work at the retail store Gap Factory at the Clinton Outlets.

At this particular Gap Factory store, 16 out of the 34 employees, including managers, are Morgan students. This means that about half of the people working at the Gap are people from our school.

This rush of Morgan students to Gap began with a job fair at the Henry Carter Hall Library where some Morgan students go to hang out. They later got called in for interviews and then joined the Gap crew. Until the last half of 2019, employees at the Gap did not have a long tenure. Because of the rapid turnover, the Gap had a shortage of employees for the fall season. To get more employees, management asked the current employees to recruit some of their friends. They even went so far as to offer a $50 gift card to reward whoever recruited the most employees. With this offer in place, many Morgan employees rushed to school and asked all of their friends to apply.

After this, a flourish of highschool friends came to the Gap. Now there are a total of 16 Morgan students employed and counting.

One reason why so many Morgan students have stayed is that it is an enjoyable workplace. When asked, one Morgan student and employee Connor Roth said, “I like the Gap overall and it’s a pretty good place.” He also says that his favorite memory was “after the work of Black Friday when everyone was hanging out in the breakroom.”

The students enjoy working where they can hang out with their friends. Student Aedan Oboyski said that it was his friends that made him apply.

The Morgan students are given many jobs to complete while working here and they are always completed to the best of their ability. These jobs include ringing customers out, folding and cleaning up clothes, and pulling inventory when things get low.

If you complete all the jobs successfully then there is a chance to get employee of the month. Most months it is a Morgan student who gets this reward. In order to get this, the employee has to be a team player, can’t call out or post shifts, and they must meet company expectations. A lot of Morgan students have gotten the opportunity to be employee of the month because of the hard work they put into the job.

We asked what one of the recent employees of the month, Megan Jenkins, thought of working at the Gap. Megan said, “I enjoy the people that work there and working there.” Megan brings good energy to work and is able to meet all the expectations that the Gap asks of her which is why she earned the employee of the month.

Head manager of the Clinton Gap Factory, Josh Sherman, says that the high schoolers “are a lot of fun to work with!” He enjoys their company and even plays games such as trivia (asking who’s on what coin and what are the capital of certain states) with the students when the store is slow.

Overall the Gap Factory is a fun place to work and the Morgan students who work there enjoy the work they do. If you ever end up going to the Clinton Crossings stop by Gap Factory and say hello, if you’re a Morgan student you’re bound to know someone there.