Work Experience Essay

For the last two weeks I have been away from home and away from the normal college life by being at the Sandhurst Day Centre Charity Shop all day 10 till 4 each day. Throughout I have done many new things and met many new people.

On my first day I got up, got ready, and got in early. Arriving early, I went in and met my new boss, Cathy. Cathy had only recently been hired as the manager of the shop and it was only her second week as I started which meant we were both learning the ways around the shop however she has been working in charity shops for years which meant she had a good idea of how to run it. She introduced me to the volunteers who helped on a Monday, David, Olivia and Margret. After meeting everyone and chatting for some time Cathy gave me some jobs to do, first I had to sort through the recent donations that had come in while we were talking. This meant I had to take out the clothes from the bags, check the conditions to see if there were any holes or stains/marks and put them onto hangers. If it wasn’t clothing I had to also check the conditions and put them into buckets relating to what it was such as books, glasses, children’s toys, puzzles and other random objects. Once these had been sorted through I then proceeded to take the clothes which had now been placed on hangers over to Olivia who would steam the clothes and give them back to me almost ready to be put onto the shop floor. There were two more steps before they could be put onto the rails, price tagging and size cubing. The price tagging meant I had to cut up some excess card, stamp it with “sandhurst day centre charity shop” and address and then ask Cathy what she wanted to price the garment for. The sizing and cubing of the garments was also simple, to do this I had to first see if it was male or female clothing as mens didn’t need sizing however if it was female I would look on the tags in the pieces, find the size and then find the corresponding size cube to put onto the hanger. This completed the process of getting a garment from the donation to onto the shop floor. Once they were ready I had to take them out of the back room and place them in size order onto the rails.

With the other items we got in besides clothing, such as the children’s toys, puzzles, books, and glasses or kitchenware (which we called bric-a-brac ) I had to further sort through them. This meant getting all the books and checking their condition and then placing them onto the bookshelf ready to fill in the shelves on the shop floor. For the puzzles I had to place a sticker saying either “complete” or “not checked” as we didn’t personally check if all the pieces were there before we sold them. Once that was done I would tape down the lid on all four sides of the boxes so they didn’t open and spill any pieces when they went out. This meant they were ready to fill the shelf where they go. The children’s toys had the same process by checking their conditions, if they had all their pieces, and if they looked expensive or new I would check eBay and see what sold items of the product went for to give us an idea on what to price the toy at. For the bric-a-brac I would check the condition to see if there were any cracks, chips or anything which would make them worthless to put on the floor and try sell. Once that was done they would go into buckets ready to go on the shelves. With all these items sorted and checked they were ready to be priced, to do this Cathy would tell me what to price them at and I would place a small sticker on the object and then place it into it’s designated place on the shop floor. If the item looked expensive or had good condition or if someone had an idea of how much it was worth I would check eBay and find the item and see how many sold versions there were of it and get a rough estimate for how much to price it at.

This routine became daily as it was very repetitive to get stock out onto the floor however the laid back feeling in the shop made it very enjoyable as everyone volunteers which meant it was a chilled workplace. Even with most of the volunteers being almost triple or quadruple my age it was fun to hear about other peoples lives and tell them about mine and my aspirations and the reasons for my work placement. With me being in every day it meant I met almost all of the volunteers who helped out at the shop, this was a slight problem for me as learning around five new names a day meant that when it came to the second week I had forgot the peoples names who I met on the first day but I persevered through that and picked up the semi-regular people like Austin, Evie, Janet and of course the manager Cathy. However there was some change such as my Tuesdays as Cathy would have a day off and a lady called Margret would take over for the day and she made a change to the routine as she taught me how to steam clothes and I spent most the day steaming all the stock prepared for Cathy to price it all and then put onto the shop floor. She also let me have a slightly longer break which was gladly appreciated and meant I could go to the Greggs down the road and get myself some lunch and enjoy it in the sun when the weather was better in the second week.

Overall the skills I have learnt over the two weeks were:

• Sorting donations into the different categories.

• Hanging and cubing clothing.

• Steaming clothes to prepare them to go on the rails.

• Pricing items with the use of eBay as a guide.

• Using a till and serving customers.

• Changing the mannequins in the windows weekly.

• Social skills, communication and meeting new people who I wouldn’t normally mix with in day to day life.

• How a business is run and works off of donations and how that effects everything.

• A work life balance

With these skills I can further take them into my own life after college as I want to set up my own business reselling and these skills from sorting clothing to steaming and pricing items to sell for a profit will help me do so when I decide to set that up.

Throughout the two weeks the wide variety of jobs I completed and the amount of jobs I did, really put into perspective how work life is a consistent continuation of doing tasks and how much has to go into a business. This work experience especially helped me mentally into knowing how a small shop works and how much goes into it to get money in to further improve it. Furthermore this gave me an insight into the real world and the ownership of a small business as in the future I want to have my own shop/business reselling clothing or my own pieces. This work experience also helped me understand work life and the repetition of working six hours almost everyday and balancing that with a social life outside of work. Also working in a charity shop meant I could see lots of different clothing and allowed me to buy myself lots of new T-shirts for cheap such as a Stüssy x creepy collaboration tee and a Vivienne Westwood polo shirt plus more. Additionally, when sorting through the donations the clothes which weren’t suitable to go onto the shop floor would be put in bins and sold for cheap to universities to reuse and make into new clothes so Cathy let me sort through the rag bags and pick out clothing which I can further use in my project for sustainability and it gave me the opportunity to get lots of fabric for only £3. Overall, I had a great two weeks staying away from home at my grandparents, switching up my schedule and working in the real world while helping a good cause for a charity and would definitely go back in the future to help again.