I finally got home, tired out and surprisingly quite cold. Looking at the clock on my mobile phone I had realised that I had been out delivering papers for one and a half hours, allowing me just thirty minutes to get ready and get the the other side of town. I quickly got changed into some suitable clothes and then made my way towards the town. On the way to the town I kept asking myself questions, what will I have to do? Will I be able to do the things which tom did last week? I wonder what the staff will be like? I managed to get myself really nervous about the whole idea of working with people I don’t know and if I was really up for the job.
I arrived at the shop ten minutes early so that I could introduce myself and get to know the staff a little bit. The main person in charge, Luke, set me off to do my first task which he said was the most important task off all. I was expecting to hear something to do with the bikes but instead he said “I don’t suppose you can run up to Aldays and grab use a pint of semi skimmed milk”. It was when he told me to get the milk when I realised they were going to take advantage of me and make me do all the things which they didn’t want to. Anyway, I was there to experience work and if that’s what higher ranked staff do, and then that’s what I was there to experience.
When I came back to the shop with the milk Luke told me to follow him to the kitchen. The kitchen was a small, dirty and smelly room which was mainly used to store bike parts. The only thing that made it a kitchen was the fact that it had a small, filthy sink, a kettle and a bag of tea bags which my best mate Tom had brought in the previous week. In the kitchen were a number of large boxes which contained bikes. Luke pulled one into the middle of the room and asked me to build it in the kitchen whilst he went back to the till to repair some other bikes. This was the part I was dreading most of all, I had never built a bike from flat pack before and there I was expected to know how it all goes together.
I opened the box and took a peep inside. The only way of describing what the bike looked like then was simply a box of bits. I took out everything and placed them in an orderly fashion across the floor. I was expecting to find a small booklet or leaflet with instructions on how to build the bike but there wasn’t any. I didn’t want the staff to know that I came to the bike shop not knowing how to build a bike so I decided to have a go at making it how I thought it went.
The first main problem I came across was the packaging. Everything was really well packaged and taped up and all I had to remove it with was a small pair of very blunt scissors. I took a look at the parts in front of me and got cracking with making the bike. Most of the building was pure common sense but there were a few occasions where I had to take apart previous parts so that I could correct myself in places. Once I had finished making the bike I had to adjust the brakes and make sure that everything was in good order. There were lots of bare cable ends which I had to cover but unfortunately I caught the end of my finger on one of the thin cable ends leaving me in agony.
I stood up, took a step back and looked at what I had done. I had made my first ever bike from scratch and I must admit, I thought I had done a very good job of it. I went out to find one of the staff members so that they could see if I had done everything ok. A young worker there called Steve came into the kitchen to check over the bike. I was biting my nails and gritting my teeth, hoping that I had done the job correctly. He was being very precise looking at every adjustment and checking that every screw was tight. He stopped what he was doing, leant the bike against the wall and said “Well done, you can carry on with the rest of the bikes in the store room”. I was so over the moon. I had taught myself a new skill which in the future could help me out.
Now that my confidence was a lot better, I found I could make the bikes a lot quicker. I made a further three bikes each a bit different before Luke came into the room and told me that I deserved a lunch break. I took advantage of my break by jogging home and getting myself some lunch.
When I came back to the shop I wanted to get straight back into it but there were other jobs that needed to be done. During my break a small lorry fully of ready and unready made bikes had arrived at the shop. With help from John, another employee of the shop, I removed all the bikes and boxes from the lorry to one of two cellars. Once the bikes were all down in the cellar I had the job of sorting them all out into different groups. I didn’t really enjoy this much as the cellar was a dark, gloomy room with a not to pleasant smell in the air. I was happy to get out of there once I had finished sorting the bikes out.
There was enough time to make a couple more bikes so I was sent back to the kitchen with my tools to make some more bikes from the store room. The radio wasn’t too good as the aerial had broken off, so I found myself a tape which I could work to. The time really flew as my mind was in working mode. At three o’clock Luke came back into the kitchen and checked all the bikes I had done. He was very impressed with what I had done and told me that I could go home. The room looked like a bomb had been set off in it so I cleared away all the tools I was using, put all the bikes I had built into stock and washed up the cups. I was now ready to go home. On the way out Luke said thank you for the work and said that he would discount me if I needed to buy any thing for my bike. I said good bye and went home.
On the way home I thought about how my day had been. I realised that although I didn’t originally want to work at the bike shop, it wasn’t as bad as what I was expecting. In life you’re not always going to get the jobs you want so I decided that for the rest of the week I was going to make the most of the experience.
