I think you might be right about why you didn’t get the retail job callbacks. On the other hand I bet today that’s no longer the case, because it’s so hard to find anyone to staff a retail job who is even remotely competent or reliable. Even if you did quit 3 months later, that’s probably above average now.
I think part of it also goes to my second point; since lots of people are qualified for retail jobs, they get a lot of applications, meaning I was competing with a very large pool of people.
I never got confirmation on this, but I am about 95% sure that I was the only person who applied to the Coldfusion job. Compare that to Target, where there was literally a queue of people applying at the terminal in the store.
I’ve been declined for enough jobs to know that you can be declined for the dumbest reasons, or no reason at all, so trying to reason about it is an exercise in futility, but I am pretty sure that a lack of applicants is the reason I got the coldfusion job
Happy for you that you found your niche!