The best thing is, well pay for your yoga, spinning, kickboxing whatever! Youll save so much money! said the Lululemon manager during my interview. Plus, youll be so healthy you wont even need to worry about health insurance!

Fantastic! I love exercise! I replied, smiling broadly and flexing slightly, hoping to land the job solely through enthusiasm and muscle tone. I had no retail experience, but I was tired of working at restaurants, and this seemed like a respectable place to bide my time and the easiest way to make money while I searched for something better. Free yoga, discounts on expensive clothes, a prime location in Union Square. At Lululemon, salesgirls are called educators and customers are called guests, a touch of class that helps to justify both the $100 yoga pants and the hours of life spent selling them.

I got the job, becoming a Lululemon educator one week after moving to New York. It was the first real thing Id accomplished in the city, besides convincing an old co-counselor from camp to let me crash on his couch in Stuytown, where I slept in a living room dominated by games Xbox, Wii, even an electronic putting green belying the serious nature of my quest for a job, a life, that mattered.

Lululemon employee training was so tightly scheduled, I couldnt help feeling like I was part of something important. Ten of us, new hires from Lululemons across Manhattan, gathered every day for about a week before any actual work began. After group yoga, the mornings were for lectures on willpower and videos on the importance of goal setting starring company founder Chip Wilson (Oh, just call him Chip, giggled one of the managers). Afternoons were for group folding sessions: long pants in fourths, capris and tanks in thirds, headbands and underwear in half; wrinkles smoothed with the flat of your hand.

Evenings were spent poring over the required reading: Jim Collins corporate self-help book Good to Great, which Chip was obsessed with. The message: Good is the enemy of great, dont settle for a mediocre life. Yes! Exactly, I exclaimed after all, wasnt that why Id left my Indiana hometown? Being hired by Lululemon began to feel almost providential.

On the eve of our first day on the job, all of us trainees got together for a last hurrah in the basement of the SoHo store. We drank kombucha and ate gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free cookies from Whole Foods while we crafted goal sheets: lists of our life goals for the next 10 years, to be framed and hung on the walls of our respective stores.

This put me in a bit of a pickle, since my goal was to leave as soon as I found an office job with benefits. But now Lululemon had invested so much time in what was called my development. Perhaps, as my empty goal sheet suggested, I really did need their help. After several crappy jobs, the steadiness of 9-to-5 was appealing not having to run around, sweating, sucking up to people, dependent on tips as was the idea of helping to make something that would last. But what would that look like? I liked to read, so Id mostly been applying for editing positions. But I couldnt write down such a half-baked goal for all to see.

Under the guise of getting another hemp-seed cookie, I leaned over and read my neighbors goals: run a marathon, do yoga teacher training, buy a country house. Easy enough. I copied her. Id figure out my real goals later.

The first few days of work were heady, accompanied as they were by a flood of endorphins: spin class at 6 a.m., vinyasa flow at 8 p.m.; Saturday morning run clubs in the park and Sunday morning yoga classes in the store. Exercise what sort, how often, the afterglow was the main topic of in-store conversation, so if you skipped a day it was obvious and people asked if you were feeling OK. We were encouraged to choose our favorite method of exercise, but it was best if it was something other people liked too, since The team that sweats together stays together!

While everyone had something else they wanted to be their passion it always seemed to fit within the Lululemon rubric. I went on runs with Jo the marathoner who also made handbags; spinning with Catherine the triathlete who was also a dancer; yoga classes with Sam, who was also an actor and a personal trainer. I spent my life trying not to be careless, he rasped in his best Vito Corleone impression. Real men stretch before they run.

See more here:
Yoga, spinning and a murder: My strange months at Lululemon