A Day in the Life of a Retail Assistant #17 
Hi everyone, we’ve had one hell of a week in Norfolk this week, plenty of online orders to keep us busy as well as many in store customers.
Monday was the usual picking for online orders for most of the day but in between I was able to research for my next article on why cigars lose humidity which you can read here.
We had plenty of customers to keep us busy too, including one gentleman who treated himself to an Arturo Fuente Opux X No77 – The Shark. As you may have noticed you currently can’t purchase Arturo Fuente cigars online so you have to come in-store to purchase them, this gentleman drove for 45 minutes just to look at our Arturo Fuente range and he was flabbergasted to see how many we have in store, if you like your Arturo Fuente you should definitely pop in-store to see what we have and you’ll be surprised to see how much we have!
On Tuesday Me and Sharon started preparing for the quarterly stock take which was on Wednesday. All employees have to help count everything in the building and it takes all day and in some cases it can spill over into the next day. Me and Sharon were tasked with counting every single cigar we have in store! So we started a day early and counted all of the rest of the world cigars like Henri Wintermans and King Edwards and adjusted as and when we needed to. After 3pm when we finished our last lot of pickings and we counted the Cuban humidor as quickly as we could, Sharon counted and I inputted the data and we made a damn good team! So when it came to Wednesday all we had to do was the New World humidor and regular readers will know how challenging it is for me and Billy to do but it turns out Sharon is so quick at counting and I’m so good and inputting data that we completed it by 2.30! A new record! We even had a chance to help others with theirs. During this we still kept our high level of service and sold quite a few Cigarism accessories.
On Friday I served a gentleman who travelled 45 minutes to look at our pipes and he was in disbelief when he saw how many we had, he treated himself to a nice and reliable Peterson – Another happy customer. Around lunch time one of my favourite customers came in and bought his payday smoke – The La Unica no. 100, I have never tried a La Unica so I shall wait to see what he says but he also purchased a box of one of my favourite cigars in the Alec Bradley Orchant Seleccion Skinny. They are a beautiful and sweet smoke with a few spicy tones too, definitely a good purchase there.
On Saturdays I am joined by our apprentice Sarah, Due to constantly being busy with her apprenticeship and packing orders she rarely gets a chance to come into the shop anymore so whenever she works a Saturday she works her socks off picking orders and serving customers, she is even getting her own regular customers now! Obviously working only 1 day a fortnight in the shop is a difficult feat, trying to learn the shop and cigars but she is doing well and I hope she continues to enjoy what she is doing. We spent some time stocking and re-organising the pipe tobacco, due to Rattrays no longer producing pipe tobacco we are finding more and more gaps on the shelf as people try to get their favourites before stock runs out and we are now starting to run very low indeed so get it while you still can. To fill in the gaps I put more beautiful accessories out for you all to see – the Lotus gift sets are particularly eye catching, a beautiful lighter a cutter set which would be great as a gift or for yourself to enjoy.
I hope you are enjoying reading my weekly blogs
So long for now
Oliver 🙂
