Work Experience: Day One

My work experience placement was at John Lewis, a national branch of stores that specialise in home furnishings. It was for five days, from Monday to Friday and this is my blog post from day one.

I wasn’t planning on doing work experience at all until the career advisor at my school suggested the position for me and my friend, Alice. He gave us a brilliant recommendation and we soon heard back that we would indeed be working there for the duration of the week. As my other friend Maria heard about it, she sent her CV and they gave her a work experience placement along with us.

We started our first day at 9:15am where we met with a young lad called Will who was also there for the experience. We were had a quick meeting and a tour followed by our daily assignments of which section of the store we would each be working in. I was given Cookshop for the morning, the section of the store that sells kitchen stuff like toasters, kettles, irons, cutlery, the whole sha-bang. I was introduced to a wonderful woman who would ‘guide’ and ‘nurture’ me to what I supposed to do for the morning. She did none of those. Instead, she talked about herself for 2 and a half hours about her children and her fabulous weekend at the park; I basically learnt her life story and me being the nice person I am, oh the irony, didn’t say a word apart from smile sweetly and nod at the appropriate times.

We had a long lunch that we spent in the staffroom trying to figure how to use the machine we had been given cards for. After that, we were given our afternoon assignments where I was allotted Audio. I have to say that I absolutely loved that part, I don’t know much about technology but I had the greatest time learning about different gadgets and dealing with customers. I organised the camera displays and the shelves before helping to sell items. There was then a lull as customers began to leave or buy the products they wanted and I suddenly found myself extremely bored. Just as that happened, my cousin and his girlfriend walked in to buy a laptop (neither of us knew we were both going to be there but coincidentally it happened). They stayed for a good half hour so I chatted with them for a bit until they left and things in the shop started to pick up again. I asked many customers whether they were alright or if they were looking for anything particular and it gave me the most amazing buzz when they said that they needed my help or wanted to see if a particular item was in stock. By the time 4 o’clock came round, I had had such a better afternoon, it more than made up for the morning.

We spoke to the Work Experience woman again, just to tell her about how our day had gone and if we were worried or concerned about anything. Overall, I did have a really good day, I got to experience different things that tested my people and selling skills but that was day one, what will I be doing for day two?