"I was visiting friends over Labor Day in Southern California and they wanted to take me by the South Coast Plaza store. We had been to Disneyland the day before, which is supposed to be the happiest place on earth, and after spending time at the store looking at all the furniture, I remember thinking that Room & Board was the happiest place on earth for me."

Although a South Coast Plaza Design Associate mentioned that a San Francisco store was in the plans, Eileen didn't think much of it until a few weeks later when she was reading the newspaper online one morning and an advertisement popped up for Room & Board San Francisco, employment opportunities.

As a 17-year veteran at FedEx she had been considering a change and was thinking of exploring other opportunities. "I wanted different challenges but I wasn't really looking. In fact, I had just accepted a different role at FedEx—but what I really wanted was to be in a creative environment."

Thinking about leaving FedEx was hard for Eileen because she worked with so many great people and had been given a lot of opportunities throughout the years, including her role as an Operations Manager working with Delivery Couriers and Dispatchers. "At FedEx I was lucky enough to have worked with really good teams—my team when I left was awesome, but the opportunity at Room & Board felt like it was falling into my lap and I remembered back to Labor Day weekend, being at the South Coast Plaza and thinking how cool it would be to work at Room & Board."

Eileen applied for her role as the San Francisco Delivery Manager and after being offered the job had the privilege of building a new team. "I loved having the opportunity of creating a team from scratch. One of the things I really enjoy about working here is that I get to work with really competent people who care about what they do—at other companies you might have one or two people that are really rock solid but here everyone is, and they are fully committed to doing the best that they can do for our customers and for each other."