We had to begin with filling in health forms and watching videos on health and safety and fire. It was a pain in the neck as the videos were very long and boring. She then gave us our locker keys and name badges. We had to leave all our valuables in our lockers for security reasons.
At 11.30am my life turned around because Eileen our supervisor was no longer supervising us, as she was too busy. Instead Sundeep, the team manager took care of us for the rest of our stay. He was tall, brown-eyed and had black hair, He rudely, told us to stack shelves for our first task. Until lunch we had to stack heavy products used in the gym.
At 12.30pm we went for lunch, but that wasn’t as expected either because I had to roam around whole lunch, following my friend and I could not sit down to rest. After working so hard I had thought that I would sit down for an hour and have a good break but the opposite happened in reality. Each and every lunchtime he would go to Virgin mega stores and look at CD’s, which I have no interest in. I had to cope with it as I had nothing else to do and if ignored him, it would make him feel bad.
After one hour we went back and asked Sundeep, on what to do next. He told us to stack shelves, yet again for the rest of the day.
At the end of the day, I was very exhausted because I stood all day. My legs were painful and after dinner I went to bed.
Looking back at my first day, I would like to say that it was not the kind of first impression I had expected of stepping into the real working world. I only blame it on one bad person, Sundeep who acted selfish and ruined my first day by giving me so much heavy work to do.
The next two days were the same because we did nothing else but stack shelves. This was getting too repetitive and we decided to complain. We put forward our problems to Eileen and she said she would make sure we did different tasks and also change our supervisor.
On Thursday Eileen told us to work with Varsha, in the pharmacy department. We were delighted to do something different. Varsha was helpful, gentle and respectful. Our task for the day was to clean up and arrange the medicines in alphabetical order. She also explained what some medicines were used for. It was tiring, but exciting as I learnt something new about medicines. We worked with her until 4.00pm and then she told us to ‘pull forward’ which means arranging all the products and pulling them forward, so that the customers can see them.
On Friday we worked with Raj. He is a short, fat and a black-eyed man. I think he was the most interesting person I worked with, as he made a joke of everything. First of all, he taught us how to use the PDT (personal database transmitter), which is used for stocktaking. It works by scanning the barcode and tells the computer how much of each item has to be ordered. I liked doing that, as it was easy.
Secondly, he taught us how to tag things. It was fun too, because you just had to stick the tag onto products. Thirdly, he took us to Sanjay, and asked him to show us what managing a store is all about. He told us that managing was simply about making money. He told us that was hard because he had to take care of staff, prevent losses and also satisfy the customer. He also told us what was effective and their profits had increased by doing this. I think this was the most interesting day as I had learnt so much in a day.
Sanjay had also asked us to carry out a survey on what the customers liked about Boots. Their answer was good customer service. I liked the management part because it is a big challenge dealing with all sorts of problems that the store faces and trying to solve them.
My first week was history and I was looking forward to my next and final week of my work experience. After enjoying a lovely weekend I was back at Boots on Monday morning.
For whole of this week we were to work with, Mayur the person in the photography department because John the person who was helping him had gone on leave and we were to cover for him.
Before we could begin our tasks something terrible happened. Money got stolen from the shop floor and no one knew anything about it. I was scared and shocked. We were all searched but nothing was found and the mood was tense for the rest of the day.
Despite all the tension Mayur gave us the duty to record customer details and what service they wanted for their photos. It was a nightmare at times as so many customers came at the same time and I struggled to deal with them. We also had to ‘pull forward’ for some time.
On Tuesday we were told that the store was being inspected and everything needed to look neat and tidy. We had to do routine tasks such as stack shelves and ‘pull forward’ for the rest of the week.
Unfortunately, our store failed and everyone was annoyed because they missed their bonus pay. I don’t know why our store failed, but I would like to mention that all the staff in our store were lazy and blamed their mistakes on someone else.
On the last day, at 5.00p.m the manager Sanjay called us to his office and thanked us for all the hard work we had done. He also gave us gifts as a token of appreciation. The gifts were shampoo and a gym bag. I thought the gifts were quite useful as they were things that I can use daily. The gym bag also reminds me of my work experience each and every time I use it. We took leave and went on to say goodbye to each and every member of staff.
Looking back at my work experience I would say I enjoyed doing it. I only chose the placement as an experience and not as a career because I am interested in doing something much more challenging and complex, such as dentistry or forensic science. I would also like to add that I am very pleased with my choice, as it gave me a chance to see how tough the working life is and aim higher and harder to achieve the job of my dreams. The experience I got will also make it easier for me to find a part time job in a retail store while I am studying.
Overall, work experience taught me to respect, communicate and work with others. These are very important skills, which will help me all my life, and I am glad to have acquired them.
