A Day in the Life of a Retail Assistant #74 Hi everyone! You can certainly tell that Summer is over! The weather has been horrible but that hasn’t stopped our loyal customers from coming in to see us and buy their lovely smokes.
On Monday, I was luckily in the parcel booking on department – I say luckily due to hurting my ankle over the weekend prior and I was struggling to walk! So I would have been unable to pick any online orders. So I booked on as many parcels as I could and even helped the packing department, making sure I was standing on my good leg.
Another exciting development is that you will all be seeing a lot more of Sarah soon. Due to my marketing commitments and being needed in other departments, it is difficult to run the shop too, so from now on Sarah will be taking responsibility for the shop! Although it isn’t a managerial position, as we have never had a shop manager, she is the second most experienced behind myself. It will be interesting to see what happens as it is her first responsibility since starting with us over two years ago.
On Tuesday, I was working in the shop with Sarah. As I didn’t have a marketing day planned, I completed my marketing content in the shop. Sarah was sorting out the pipes in the pipe room, so I was pretty much on my own all day. I wrote an article for the C.Gars Cigar Library about Boost packs which we absolutely love! They make maintaining a humidor much easier! You can read more about it here. I also finalised all of the shop newsletters, ready to be sent out on the 1st of October, which is also national coffee day! I spent some time creating new monitor pictures for the humidor, advertising the cigars of the month, as well as attempting to create a poster for the shop. I was working with our marketing manager trying to get it right, I sent over a few attempts and unfortunately, none of them reached the extremely high standards we have. But I never let criticism stop me! You must always learn from your mistakes and use them to improve yourself! I also served three great people who remember me from their last visit two years ago! Admittedly, I didn’t remember them to begin with but then they reminded me of what they bought and I remembered! They really appreciated the service they had last time and were happy to see me. I showed them through our humidors and we spoke about plenty of cigars until they found the ones they wanted. I hope they enjoyed their visit as much this time as they did two years ago.
On Thursday, It was our quarterly, full building stock count. For me this is more of the same, I always count cigars with a team. This time it was Josh, Ciaran and Sarah, so we split into two teams, Josh and Ciaran counted the Cuban room and Sarah and I counted the New World room. As always it took us all day but we always complete it in the end!
On Friday, I was needed in the Packing department. My packing skills are just as good as they ever were but luckily I did have Lisa, who is a Packing whizz, to look after me… Just in case. We were having a great time packing together as we rarely spend a whole day together in the same department. We also had the Cigar Subscriptions to be sent out too, so I left Lisa in the afternoon to help book on the parcels. It really shows how multi trained I am across multiple departments. We all know the saying, Jack of all trades, master of all?… I’m sure that’s what it is! We have an ongoing joke that I need to bring a cape, as I’m a superhero always saving the day.
On Saturday, It was Josh, Ciaran and I working together. We picked our orders and then started to organise the shop. We have changed our table displays ready for Halloween! We also have a great Halloween competition at the moment. If you purchase anything from our main display table, you get to have a go on our trick or treat! There are some great treats up for grabs as well as some evil tricks! I have also scattered some sweets around the shop so come on in and treat yourself!
I hope you have enjoyed this weeks goings on and I hope to see you all in store very soon!
So long for now
Oliver
