1 June, 2011 in IC Helpdesk, Work by Aonghas

Smoochy Discipline

This afternoon I had a quick 2 hour shift at the Information Commons at uni. Halfway through my shift I was looking at my Google calendar online when I was approached by a “mature” female student who was having a problem where she was studying upstairs on level 3 in the silent study computer lab. By “mature”, I mean she was probably pushing 50 years old, if not older. Apparently there was a distracting couple sitting next to her and she couldn’t concentrate because they were constantly whispering and “smooching”. She wanted one of us to help by telling them off effectively. I looked over to my workmate who gave me a facial expression that said “you can deal with it”, so I told the lady that I would be up shortly to survey the noise levels.

A couple of minutes after she had left, I went up to level 3 and roamed down the aisles to make sure everyone was obeying the silent rule. I found the offending couple near the end of the room when I noticed an Asian girl sitting on a guy’s lap. I assumed he was her boyfriend. Although they weren’t in individual booths like they were supposed to be, it didn’t seem like they were making too much trouble when I walked past. I noticed the chair next to them was vacant but still had books open on the table, so I guessed the mature student had been sitting there. I thought I’d stay on level 3 just in case anything else happened, so I logged into the staff PC in the middle of the room and thought I’d check my email. A couple of minutes later the same mature lady came back and said to me, “did you see the couple? Are you too embarrassed to tell them off?!” She told me they were still whispering and distracting her so I followed her back to her desk and tapped the guy’s shoulder and asked if he realised it was an “individual silent study area”. As soon as I said the word “individual”, he quickly replied “oh yes yes, sorry I’m just waiting for a free computer…” Hmm didn’t really justify the fact he and his girlfriend were getting cozy with each other on the chair and playing with each other’s hair. By this time everyone else in the same aisle had turned around to see what the fuss was about. I just stood there right next to him until he felt awkward enough to leave. Even when they were parting ways, they extended their arms out to each other as if they’d never see each other again.

Ahh dear, young love huh?

24 October, 2010 in Work by Aonghas

Cotton On Update

So today I was walking past the Cotton On construction site at Westcity and they’ve now got some decor outside saying that a new store is coming soon. In a previous post I mentioned that they had covered up the new location of our store. It’s pretty exciting and hopefully we’ll be able to move in there soon. Maybe that will make my enjoyment levels of working at Cotton On rise!

The anticipation rises....

3 October, 2010 in Work by Aonghas

Coming to a Store Near You

Coming soon: Cotton On Westcity

A couple of days ago I was talking to one of my workmates on the phone and she told me that our store is moving location soon at Westcity. It came as quite a surprise because I hadn’t heard anything about it previously. She told me that our store was going to be moving to where the clothing store Barkers used to be, near Cotton On Kids. So today during my work break I decided to take a wander to see where our store is going to be relocated. Lo and behold, as I approached Cotton On Kids, I saw that Barkers had in fact already been closed and their store was covered up (presumably they have already started building our new store). It’s an exciting thought that Cotton On Westcity could be moving even before Christmas comes, and I’m definitely looking forward to it. In some ways it’s going to be sad because it will feel like an end of an era, since I’ve worked in our current store for nearly 4 years. However, I guess it means we’ll have more staff at our new store and I won’t have to work by myself on Sunday afternoons any longer. Apparently our current store will be converted into a Cotton On Rubi Shoes store, so it looks like Cotton On won’t be abandoning our store altogether! Watch this space…

25 July, 2010 in Work by Aonghas

Busting Potential Theives!

I started work at my usual time of 1:30 this afternoon. Sigourney was working the morning shift and finished at 3:30 after I got back from my break. Anyway, everything seemed like a usual Sunday afternoon at work – pretty quiet probably since it was after the first week back at school for most people. However, just after 4pm I got a visit from a few suspicious-looking youngsters who showed up in a mob of around five or six. From the moment they walked in, there was something amiss about the way they looked. A few of them were wearing backpacks that were obviously empty – a telling sign that they might be up to no good. It was time for friendly Aonghas to put his detective hat on.

Since there were no other customers at the time, I was entirely focused on the teens sifting their way through the store. A few minutes later one of the young lads (who we’ll call Joseph from now on for convenience sake) comes up to me and asks if he can try on the black skinny jeans he’s holding. I say sure and open one of the changing rooms for him. Seconds later, his mate (who we’ll call Frank) asks me the same question, holding the same style of black skinny jeans. “Fair enough,” I thought to myself and let him into the adjacent changing room. So that was okay. While Joseph and Frank were trying on the skinny jeans, the other groupies were lingering around by the changing rooms and I was standing a few metres away, spying on their every move.

Hoping that maybe other customers would draw my attention away, the group continued to gaze around the store absent-minded until one of the mates (who we’ll call Charlie) walked over to the skinny jeans and took another pair off the rack. On closer inspection, I could see that there were in fact two pairs of jeans he was carting back to the changing room, though he was trying his best to make it look like it was just the single pair. Charlie put the jeans over Joseph’s door and I made a mental note that Joseph now had three pairs of jeans in his changing room. Charlie headed back to the jeans rack and took yet ANOTHER pair of jeans off the same rack and this time put them over Frank’s changing room door. At first I gave them the benefit of the doubt – perhaps Joseph just really couldn’t decide what size he was in girls’ skinnys. But what Charlie did next pushed it too far, and I knew then it was time to step in…

Alongside our changing rooms we have a column of hooks that have numbered tags 1 through to 6. When someone wants to try on some clothes, we are supposed to take note of how many items of clothing they have and hang the tag with that number outside their door. Now Charlie must have seen the tags hanging nextdoor and he thought he’d be crafty by taking a ’1′ tag and hanging it on Frank’s door. I knew that Frank had two pairs of jeans so I stepped in and said, “eh, doesn’t that guy have two pairs of jeans in there?” Charlie stared at me, obviously trying to think of an excuse on the spot and said, “uhh, ohh umm…” and I said “yeah, that guy has two pairs and your other mate in the other changing room has three!” He knew I was on to them by now, so when Joseph came out holding his three pairs of jeans I asked him how they fitted and he told me that they were all too tight. He passed the jeans to Charlie and then Charlie said,

“oh farr oi, I got you 2 pairs of the same size ow!”

I find it ironic that that two pairs were the same size yet Joseph didn’t seem to realise because they were all too tight. Hmmm. The mob started to move out of the store, and I made sure they put the jeans back. But Frank, the guy with the two pairs, was still in the changing room, perhaps trying to conjure up a scheme to get the jeans past me. When he finally opened the door, I was standing there looking straight at him. He knew there was nothing else he could do so he walked past me and put the two pairs back on the rack and scurried out to join his mates who had left the store by this time. After he left I went to the rack of jeans and noticed the two pairs he put back were ALSO the same size… Grrr.

Part of me feels satisfied that I managed to prevent a theft from happening, but at the same time I’m a little annoyed that I couldn’t do anything else about it. I just hope that they don’t recognise me in future when I’m walking home from work at night, or else I’ll have to pull out my kung-fu if they try anything funky on me.

17 April, 2010 in Work by Aonghas

Working with Nikki

Similar to last Saturday, I was rostered on to work today from midday till the end of day. The only other person working with me was Nikki and, similar to last Saturday, there was nothing to do at work when I arrived. Because we were bored out of our brains, Nikki and I had a bit of a chat to help pass time. We talked about a variety of topics: school, uni, work… and funnily enough, because Nikki went to Avondale College, she also had the same misunderstanding about me as the girl at the Sizers’ party last night. We soon talked about our interests and I told her about my website and how I hope to start selling stuff in my online store… then Nikki talked about her art/graphics and some design work she does… THEN we clicked – we could go into business together! If I had the online store and she designed the T-shirts and stuff, we could have a good thing going! Ahh but that’s wishful thinking I guess.

I had worked with Nikki a few times before today but we didn’t really talk that much because there was never any time. Thanks for the chat Nikki, I look forward to our next shift together!

8 April, 2010 in Work by Aonghas

Working My Holiday Away

The past two days I haven’t really done much except work. Yesterday I worked from 1pm to 6:30pm and today I worked a lunch cover from 11-2. The good thing about working in the holidays is that there are more people rostered on so I always have someone to talk to and I’m never alone in the store. The bad thing about working in the holidays is the increased number of customers, namely school kids who have nothing else to do but stroll on in and mess up the clothes I’ve just tidied. Today I worked with Ashton for my whole shift and Dasha started at 1pm. I managed to finish all the stock we received before my shift was over, leaving nothing for Dasha to do for the rest of the day. Hopefully she didn’t get too bored this afternoon/evening! I had to walk home after work and on the way I nearly walked into a budding fern that was hanging over the footpath. Unfortunately I didn’t have a better camera with me, but I took a photo with my cell phone. It looked way better in real life though, honest!

I nearly walked into this fern hanging over the footpath

1 January, 2010 in Holidays, Work by Aonghas

The Beginning of a New Decade

Happy New Year everyone. As I’m writing this blog there is less than 40 minutes before the first day of the year is officially over, so I’m going to try and cram this to make it on time!

At midnight my brothers and I drove to Te Atatu Peninsula to watch the fireworks from the Sky Tower. They were pretty predictable as it turned out, similar to the fireworks last year. I guess there isn’t much that could have changed, but maybe in the future they should consider having fireworks shoot out of the harbour bridge too. That would be cool!

My first day of 2010 was spent… at work. That’s right, while all of you were sobering up from your late night partying, I had to be at work at 8:30am! A whole one and a half hours before the mall even opened at 10am. Before opening the store, I spent the time unpacking stock and taking out the rubbish from yesterday. When it was time to open, luckily there weren’t too many customers (just a few grandparents straggling around). I managed to get quite a few boxes of stock finished before midday, which arrived quicker than I expected since we opened an hour later than usual. One of the weird things that I came across today at work was writing the date in the daily planner and on various paperwork. I had become so accustomed to writing the year with a ‘zero’ prefix, for example ‘08 or ‘09. This morning when I went to write the date down, I wrote “01/01/0” before realising it was now 2010, so I had to add the 1 before the last zero – 01/01/10. Bit of a brain teaser that one!

Like yesterday, I worked with Sigourney from 1pm onwards. It was our initial plan to get all the stock finished by the end of the day but there were still a couple of boxes left when it was time to rack up. Luckily the girls working this weekend only have to do two boxes of stock over two days so it should be a cinch! Overall the day at work wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. If there’s anything that can make me feel better, at least I got paid time-and-a-half wages today! Hopefully the bank account will be looking a bit healthier shortly, because chances are I’ll need it for later on in the year when Uni starts.

I just want to thank everyone who sent their New Years wishes and texts to me today. Even though a lot of the messages are pretty much the same thing, it still means a lot to know you thought of me when you were decided who to send the mass message to! I hope you all have a wonderful 2010 year, enjoy the sunshine for the next few months while it’s still around, and set some realistic goals for yourself while the year is still fresh!

And would you look at that, I finished with 17 minutes to spare before midnight…

29 June, 2009 in Work by Aonghas

Working at Cotton On Kids

This morning I had a pretty late sleep in (oh the joys of the holidays!). When I woke up and reached for my phone, I saw that I had missed two phone calls. My manager at work tried calling and she also sent me a text asking if I could do a lunch cover at Cotton On Kids today. Since I didn’t really have anything else planned for the day I replied and said I could work. I started at 12pm and when I arrived at the Kids store I met Pauline for the first time. She took over as manager at Cotton On Kids after Denis left last month. She told me that there wasn’t a lot of stuff to do today; just a few boxes of stock. It was a pretty quiet day so there weren’t too many customers. But when Pauline went on her break, I was left to fend for myself in the store – not knowing ANYTHING about children’s clothing.

My first incident with a customer happened about 10 minutes after Pauline left. This lady was looking at these baby-looking one-piece thing with buttons at the top and she called me over. She asked me,

“Do you reckon I should get a size 0, because I think size 00 might be a bit too small?”

Size 0? Size 00?! I didn’t even know there was such thing as size 0! After a short pause of awkward confusion, I said “ummm… well how old is your baby?” That was a BIG mistake. Now she thought I actually knew what I was talking about so she started giving me a lengthy description about her baby and how she sometimes gets a certain size from Pumpkin Patch but it’s different at Cotton On… then when she finished talking, she expected me to give her my “professional opinion”. I felt like I was digging myself a bigger hole, so I just said “maybe you could go for the size 0, but if it’s too big you could always bring it back and exchange it”. Phew! Nice work, I thought.

After that little run-in I realised how little I knew about clothes for babies and even what was on sale and what wasn’t. I tried to generate a few generic answers I could give the customers just in case I didn’t know the answers to their questions. Over time I figured the response that worked the best was “oh um… sorry I don’t usually work here, I’m just filling in today for a lunch cover!” followed by a small chuckle. That usually stopped them from asking further questions.

My silliest incident happened just before Pauline got back from her break. This lady who was pretty pregnant was buying some clothes at the counter and we got talking about babies. I told her about my previous encounters with customers and how I didn’t know anything about baby clothes, while she just laughed and told me not to worry about it. Just as she was leaving, she saw some children’s headbands in a plastic box next to the counter. She picked one up and asked, “that would probably be a bit too big for a new-born don’t you think?” to which I replied,

“err… umm… I don’t know what a… baby looks like sorry!”

As soon as I said that, I realised how stupid it must have sounded. I tried to explain what I meant but before I could the lady said, “hahaha, oh don’t worry you’re doing well!” before walking out. I didn’t know what a baby looked like…?! Stupid Aonghas, stupid.

I was glad when Pauline came back from her break because at least she would know what she’s talking about. I thought my awkward/embarrassing episodes would be over – but just to top things off, I had one more awkward moment before I finished work. Pauline was talking to a lady with her young son about jeans or something, and they had gone to the back of the store to try them on. A short while later when Pauline was at the front of the store, I heard the lady call out from behind the curtain, “excuse me!” Seeing as I was closer, I walked up to the curtain and replied “yes?” She pulled back the curtain and the immediate look on her face was that of pure shock. She looked at me and said,

“Do you work here?!”

Something told me that she was expecting to see me. Well to be fair, I wasn’t expecting to see her half-dressed son standing there either.

Today wasn’t the first time I’ve worked at Cotton On Kids, but every other time I’ve worked there it’s always just been to cover for someone so that they could go to the toilet or take the banking. Working alone in a children’s clothes store for that long was definitely a new experience for me! I never knew children’s clothing could be so complicated to understand!

27 July, 2008 in Church, Work by Aonghas

Goodbye Denis!

It was more or less a typical Sunday for me today. I didn’t fall asleep during the sermon that many times I don’t think… although I can’t really remember to be honest. After the service at Sunday School, we were talking about personal body image and how we perceive ourselves. It was a pretty interesting conversation though I don’t know if I said everything I wanted to say.

Today I didn’t have to start work until 2 o’clock (I usually start at 1:30pm) so I had more time to eat lunch and not have to worry about the time. At lunch we had pork buns and sticky rice; the buns were separated into separate bags – because usually they have a vegetable bun and a pork bun in the same bag. I sat down at a table with Hamish and while we were eating, Sherman came over to sit with us. I hadn’t talked to Sherman for a long time and he was interested to know how I had been over the last little while. I told him about school and how everything this year has been really busy. I talked about going to Atlanta for the robotics competitition and he seemed quite interested (well, I think he was…). He then told me about his work at the hostel and his intentions to do further study in Christianity. Later my mum came over to our table and we continued our conversation for a little bit longer until we had to go.

When I arrived at work I was greeted by Rosaria, one of the new girls. I remembered that Denis had transferred to work at Cotton On Newmarket, because he usually worked with me on Sundays. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him properly. Oh well, I’m sure we will meet again the next time I feel an urge to buy some clothes from Cotton On Newmarket. Make sure you come to visit me sometime too Denis! Rosaria’s shift finished at 2 o’clock so I was going to be working the rest of my shift by myself. The four hour countdown began.

One of the things I like best when I’m working is when friends and whanau come to visit me. I like to keep a list of the people who come to visit (and hopefully I’ll add the grand visitors list to my website soon). Before I actually started my shift I met Zhan Curtis who was buying something at the counter. I had to stop and think whether or not Zhan still went to our school; I didn’t want to ask him and embarrass myself if he said yes. I think he does still go to our school though… yeah, let’s go with that. Nobody else who I recognised came in to see me for a long time after that, so I spent most of the time trying to rack up the store and make it look tidy. There were a few boxes of stock in the changing rooms which I didn’t know if I was supposed to do or not, but upon closer inspection I noticed that most of it was sale stock and we don’t have the sale stock on the floor at the moment. Anyway, halfway through my shift Kriza came into the store. Kriza was one of the supervisors who was working at Cotton On when I first started in December 2006. It was really good to see her again after such a long time. We had a short conversation and she told me that she was doing her honours year of her Food Science degree at Auckland Uni. After Kriza left, the visitor numbers started to grow! Great! First it was Serenne who came in, then I met a Korean girl called Jenny (who used to learn violin from Mrs Green with us) before Ari and Elina came in to visit. Apparently it is Kento’s (their younger brother) birthday tomorrow so they came to the mall to look for a birthday present for him. Gees Ari, took you long enough to come visit…