Funny how the only thing that finally got me to blog about my working experience is when there is no Internet and I only have Microsoft Word to write in. So let’s cut to the chase.
I had no intention of working whatsoever once the semester break started. I guess I have to blame (thank?) Amira for being the one who silently influenced me to get a part-time job what’s with her saying how she wants to work too to earn some money. Besides that there were my brother and mother telling me to do something useful like getting a job during the break.
Speaking of part-time jobs, before this I thought if I had one I would love to work in a book store. That was the dream. And somehow I ended up going to Bookxcess’s website and looked at the available positions there and just… emailed them my resume (which was just taken from my Khazanah scholarship application aha). P.S: You can order and buy books online from their website too!
If you don’t know, Bookxcess is a local chain of bookstores selling books for over 50% less than the normal price of them being sold elsewhere, at the same quality, as they sell the excess / overprinted books from the publishers, thus its name, Bookxcess. The first store started in Amcorp Mall nine years ago and now they are also in One Utama, Fahrenheit Mall, SS15 Courtyard and Centrum Mall. If you haven’t heard of them, you’ve probably heard of the Big Bad Wolf book sale held annually then, where majority of hundreds of thousands of books are sold at around only RM3 to RM10. They’ve also done the Big Bad Wolf sale in Indonesia and Thailand due to its success.
Curious Corner in the Big Bad Wolf sale on December!
Anyway, I got a call a day after telling me if I would agree to work for Curious Corner instead, and to come to the interview the next day. Curious Corner (CC) is a separate sub-shop(?) under Bookxcess (BXS) , except they sell non-book items and mostly collectibles like posters, figurines, pop art, and other things too such as decorations, gifts, puzzles, games, toys etc. So the interview was basically just the supervisor telling me what to do and just like that, I got the job because CC was seriously under-staffed and they only had 2 full time workers.
This section will always look like it's been hit by a hurricane after the weekends
Summary of work schedule: six days a week, the one off-day being a Wednesday as weekends are when the place is full of people and manpower is most needed, at RM5 per hour, and the shift being either from 10AM to 6.30PM or 1PM to 9.30 PM with one one-hour break or full-day from 10AM to 9.30PM with one one-hour break and another half an hour break later.
The professionalism ends here. HERE COMES THE REAL PETTY DURRAH AHAHHA. Before getting the job, my mum warned me that she won’t allow me to get a job where I go back at nights or ones that take away my weekends, and I ended up getting one involving both of them ahhahaha. Plus, let me tell you how different it was between BXS (aka my dream place) and CC.
1. The number of staff at BXS daily is around 5-10? CC is around 1-3.
2. At BXS, even having only 3 people during the opening could cause a chaos because it’s considered as too little people, whereas in CC, 1 is enough most of the time.
3. The daily sales at BXS are around RM7,000, and could go up to RM30,000 on weekends. At CC, on reaaalllyy good weekends we can get RM5,000, and on weekdays if the sales reach RM1,000 dah alhamdulillah (but it is the average sales daily).
4. There are separate people in charge as the cashier, of the customer service (answering questions, phone calls, anything related to the member card like keying in and applying new ones etc, giving vouchers), handling the giftwrapping station, receiving new stock and checking them, arranging everything including the ones in the storeroom etc in BXS. In CC however, WE ARE ALL THE SAME PERSON HAHAHAHAHA PLS COME WORK HERE sobs.
5. They probably don’t have the chance to sit while we get to sit a lot lel.
6. It’s more challenging and stressful in BXS as customers come non-stop and there is no room or time for mistakes, while we at CC have all the time in the world to chat with customers and calmly correct any mistakes done.
7. Because the staff Is a lot in BXS, one probably has to OT (overtime/full-day shift) rarely, maybe once a week? Meanwhile there is me looking at my schedule every week dying a little inside when I realize I have to work for 11 hours and 30 minutes for three days a week.
8. That’s all I can think of for now.
How was starting out like? I won’t lie, or sugarcoat it – I felt like dying. I was thinking of 8292920 other things I could have done instead at home instead of just staring out in space and having my legs sore from standing for a long time when I go home. Regret filled my mind every moment. I hated how clueless I was with the cashier machine, how clumsy I was at handling things and how the others always commented on how blur and clueless I was. I hated myself for making mistakes and getting scolded at by my supervisor. I hated how everyone else at my age there are all so used to working already to earn money they needed, independent for a long time now and coming there by a number of buses and LRTs while I was the spoilt privileged kid on her first part-time job who had her dad send and fetch her every day from work. I hated going back at night when the whole mall is almost empty and I pray I’ll come back alive.
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The day that I had to carry them and hang these I threw up three times hahahaha
Everything was a learning process, and I’m glad those thoughts diminished after the first week and I started being attached to that place.
I miss laughing and talking to my other two sister/mother-like coworkers who shared with me a lot of life advices and old-pop culture knowledge, bantering with aunties to persuade them that they should really get the whole ceramic chicken set because it’s the Year of The Rooster in 2017, running back and forth to the store room and making it a mess looking for a newer Kylo Ren or Tupac Shakur pop art, telling customers the best way they can split their bill so they end up paying RM200 less and still get a RM100 voucher, hanging the frames and tin signs all over the store with the arrangement being my choice, that satisfying feeling when the float money and sales money are tallied with the system during the closing process, and so many other memories.
Some of the many more pop art on display.
I’ll miss my coworkers too. Although there were arguments and ill feelings, I am glad all of us managed to sneak in slices of cake from Secret Recipe and eat them happily while saying our wishes on New Years’ Eve to celebrate the upcoming new year and also because it was my last day of work ahaha. There was certainly diversity with the people working there what’s with people from BXS coming as backup at some times and people coming and resigning to continue their education, getting a stable job or going back to their hometown.
There was A, my second Mama who came in as the new supervisor for this store yet was there since the start of BXS and told me tales of previous bosses and longtime customers. She makes the nicest wrapped gifts at the fastest speed and told me so much about The Beatles and Elvis Presley as well as other classics. An avid collector of limited edition magazines especially of Mad and The Rolling Stones, pop culture is her second nature and I wouldn’t know much about Star Wars or The Godfather or Jimi Hendrix without her. She’s also an extremely determined person who will not stop on a project once she sets her mind on it, which ends up with us taking off all the previous hangings and decorations and displaying new ones, in which her mastermind succeeds because people would immediately ask for them to buy it. I secretly think she’s the boss of another company hmmm and anyway it was nice to have someone to laugh with a lot.
We took off everything here and changed it to..
and
B was like A’s twin and she was the Mak Su, also coming in days after A. She has many stories to tell from her experiences working from being a factory worker, being in manufacturing companies and being the mall’s customer service counter. One minute she could be joking and pranking me into eating a handful of wasabi-coated peanuts, the next moment she would be talking about how to analyze people, of how you need to constantly challenge your life, and how she reads a lot of self-help and psychology books especially from Edward de Bono. I’ll always laugh at how she doesn’t have any clue about today’s entertainment industry, how she mistook Thor as David Beckham, Jabba The Hutt as Chewbacca and Tupac Shakur as a football player (“why is he shirtless then??”). She also taught me how to invest in ASB among other life advices hahahaha. I hope she considers being a motivational speaker or writing a self-help book.
B was my first paper-bag-making student hahah with mine on the left and hers on the right
Then there was C who’s always getting into trouble hahaha but thank you for being my only same-age friend. It was an odd combination but he is working to pay off his fees for working out in the gym and to buy all these protein shakes etc yet at the same time he is taking a diploma on culinary and dreams to work either as a chef on the Star Cruise or to open up a restaurant in New Zealand. And then there’s D who I only met on weekends, who felt like an older sister. Having a Masters in Environmental Science from UM didn’t stop her from working every single day to collect money whilst looking for a proper job. Both she and C told their experiences of working elsewhere and I have more respect for the sales promoter in shopping malls now knowing that they’re not allowed to sit or talk at all. I’m glad she’s becoming a teacher soon as it fits her personality well and I’m sure students will love her. She also taught me how as an adult, how many you need to divide your income to pay the bills, send to parents, invest, treating self, etc. And there are others of course, like a girl my age who’s already earning almost RM10k as she worked full-time right after SPM and other young people in their early 20s who are like experts, almost managing everyone because they started working young.
Working has taught me a lot of things like how to use the cashier machine properly (I overcharged a customer by RM8 once on her credit card and had to pay back using my own money), how to tear off the receipt (after a week of half-torn ones), how to use the punchcard machine (after overlapping times on the same box a lot of times), how to wrap gifts, how to make paper bags (learnt from boredom) and especially, how to talk to strangers. The customers are diverse too, except like teenagers under 16 usually have no reason to come by the shop by themselves lel.
hasil tangan bila bosan part 1
hasil tangan bila bosan part 2
Being there also made me think of a lot of things. It was quite scary from my experience of the earlier half of 2016 when I had nothing to do because when you are only accompanied by your thoughts, it could get self-destructive. When there were no customers and I had nothing to do I liked to draw and write lists, like oh what to write about in this particular blog post, what could I do with the rest of the two week semester break, how I’m going to use the money I earned, what I would love to eat now etc. I also counted every hour leading to the end of each day’s shift lel and wrote the amount of money I am supposed to get every day.
Money. The appreciation of that piece of paper went on a whole new level after this stint. Knowing that spending even RM5 means you just took away that one hour of work’s pay turned me into a very kedekut person hahaha I ended up bringing my own food from home to eat during lunch in the storeroom every day. From asking my coworkers on how they save and spend their money as an adult too, how it can take your whole life’s earning to buy your own house and car and I’m just thinking wah how lucky are us the people whose parents can immediately sponsor those ASAP. So ya that made me motivated to study harder in college and get a good job. Anyway hehe guess whose bank account just hit 5 digits from her savings only thanks to writing for The Star and working here and also from duit raya hehe hopefully can use it in the future to either study overseas for Masters or if I want to start up a business HAHAHHAA or for charity or to travel or when there’s any emergency etc~
Have I mentioned how much I love the music there too? In the first few weeks of work the music player was playing the same 300+ top 2016 songs that I missed out from listening because I rarely listen to the radio hahaha so it was good to catch up with that, although it got pretty boring after a while. And then my coworker C changed the playlist to songs from his phone and it was full of hardcore metal rock stuff that was… not.. my.. type.. My ears, alhamdulillah, tak bleed teruk sangat dengar ya. And then the boss just changed the whole playlist to only songs from The Beatles, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. AND IT WAS LIKE LOVE AT FIRST.. LISTEN? I had a Michael Jackson and The Beatles phase once so listening to them again reignited my love for their songs, and I started watching back videos of their performances, and Elvis’ too. Sometimes I would just sigh looking at their posters and wish I was born in an earlier era and fangirl over them like when the whole world did.
That whole row of The Beatles canvas posters though
I think this is perhaps one of my longest post here. Can’t blame myself, the experience was just one-of-a-kind. Anyway, walking to the shop every day from the entrance, I would always pass by a café and I will always look at the overpriced drinks longingly ever since the first day ahhahaha I mean come on it was around Christmas time and doesn’t everyone have this fantasy of snuggling in front of a fireplace sipping on some chocolate drink while it’s snowing outside lelelelel. I decided to treat myself during my last night of work and finally bought a chocolate drink there on my last night of work AND THAT SATISFACTION OF DOING SO WAS PRICELESS I ALMOST TEARED UP DURING THE FIRST SIP.
So yeah that’s it. Here’s a shoutout to everyone who visited me whether intentionally or not haha thank you Mama, Baba, Aiman, Amzar, Nenek, Along Ha, Kak Fitrah, Kak Nailah, Shahnaz, Huda, Widad, Syifaq, Pak Azmi, Noh, Syabil, Isa, (the huge number of family members and the constant visiting from them became an inside joke among us working there ya), Nadine, Nihad and Zhee Qi! I would also like to thank the drama Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo for being something I look forward to watching every week during my off days. <3 div="" nbsp="">
Thank you and have a nice 2017~
5 Seconds of Summer - Jet Black Heart
One of the songs I grew to love after listening to this almost every day in the shop in the first few weeks hahaha
The Beatles - You're Gonna Lose That Girl
"You're going to lose that girl. I'll make a point, of taking her away from you, yeah" Love this song love the lyrics
The Beatles - Help!
"Help me get my feet back on the ground | Won't you please, please help me?" this song is too relatable don't we all need help in in our life one way or another?
I'll miss telling little children that they can't climb on this train
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