My Life

Well it’s nearly here. Four more days and I start work at IBM.

I received the job in May 2008 and have been waiting for this the whole year. On Tuesday 13th January I will be leaving Melbourne for Sydney. IBM is sending me to Sydney for four weeks of training after which I will be placed into one of three sections (Web Portals, Enterprise Integration, Enterprise Application Development).

I’m excited to be starting work at IBM, but I must admit I’m very excited about traveling to Sydney and living there by myself for the next four weeks. It should be a great experience and one that I will remember for the rest of my life.

I’ll try to update my blog while I’m up there to share my thoughts and daily activities.

Wish me luck.

Thanks,

Marat

Well today was another Southland classic. As you may have heard earlier and for those who haven’t, in December 2007 our store BCC Computers and quite a few others in Southland Shopping Centre were water damaged. This was mainly due to the fact that Southland’s roofs were not maintained correctly therefore causing water to flow indoors and into the stores. One of those stores was BCC Computers.

We had experiences a couple of quick blackouts in the centre and were on our way to setting up some UPS’s when suddenly at the front entrance to the store water started gushing down. To cut a long story short we had over $70,000 worth of stock damaged and weren’t able to operate for several days.s

So now I come to my point about today. At approximetely 4pm we were hit with a blackout, then 5 minutes later another. Only this time a line of stores including our own did not receive power after the second blackout. The main strip started to receive power and light up but we did not. Our main lights hadn’t received power and we were in nearly complete darkness. Our main computers were running of the UPS’s and only had around 15 minutes of juice in them. We had decided to close the store and leave early.

We had closed and left at 4.30pm. It has been yet another day screwed by the incompetent people managing Southland.

Thanks,

Marat

Yep that’s right, pretty much everyone at work is getting screwed by our boss.

Not to mention the fact that we’re getting underpaid by a considerable amount we now all have less hours and are expected to sell more.

My current roster is Friday 5.30pm – 9pm, Saturday 11am – 5pm and Sunday 10am – 5pm.

Starting next week my roster will change to Friday 5.30pm – 9pm, Saturday 12pm – 4pm and Sunday 11pm – 4pm.

I will also be expected to make $300 worth of sales per hour at 25% gross profit (GP) or $68 gross profit per hour. On average 70% of my sales are made on Saturdays because as most retail sales workers would know Saturdays are the busiest days of the week.

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Yeah today was fun at work. At around 12pm I had a couple come in and talk to me about a desktop package which I had recommended to them. They sounded convinced and told me there were going out to think about it for a while, but they’ll probably come back and take it.

The rest of the day I had hardly any sales. I was floating around $600 worth of sales, whereas Collin (Sales/Technician) was already $3000+ and Phil (Store Manager) was just over $1000.

It was 15 minutes to closing time (4.45pm) when the couple I had spoken to earlier came back to purchase the system. Now the purchase would have been nice and quick if it wasn’t for the fact that they wanted to purchase using Flexirent.This meant calling Flexirent, letting the customer talk to the Flexirent staff over the phone for approximately 10 minutes while they gather all personal and financial details from the customer and then wait another 5 minutes before they process all the customer details and let you know whether the customer has been approved or not.

At around ten past five (5.10pm) the customer was approved, but as we found out then, the customer did not have his Direct Debit details which meant that we had to wait a bit longer for the customer to call home and get someone to read out the Direct Debit details needed for Flexirent.

After receiving the Flexirent papers by fax, all details had been filled out by Sarah (Cashier) and faxed back to Flexirent. I gathered all the components from the computer package and had Sarah place them through our Point of Sale system (MYOB Retail Manager).

We had closed the shop at 5.35pm. It had been a long long day at work today. I’m just happy to be relaxing at home tonight.

Tip:
When purchasing laptops/desktops from retailers please do so no less then 30 minutes prior to closing time.

Thanks,

Marat

Well it’s currently 8.40am and I’m on laptop still in bed. I’ve checked my Gmail and looked at how my blog was going. And now as I look at the time, I see I only have another 30 minutes to lay around before I have to get up, get dressed and drive to work.

Sundays is a bit weird at work. Compared to Saturdays we don’t have as many staff on, and for a good reason. It’s bloody nearly always dead. It sometimes gets too boring on Sunday. But the other problem is, because it’s so dead you can’t make the sales, making your sales figure look pretty small.

Sundays average sales figure for me is around the $1,500 mark, compared to a Saturday which gets to around the $2,500 or higher. Yesterday my manager Phil let me know my sales figures for June were just below $20,000. I work three days a week, Thursday 5.30pm – 9pm, Saturday 11am – 5pm and Sunday 10am – 5pm.

That figure turns out to be $5000 a week which is about right because Thursdays gets no action at all, and I have to make up for it on Saturdays and Sundays.

Oh and if some of you are wondering where I work, its at BCC Computers in Southland Shopping Centre.

Well I’m going to be off now, hopefully I can still lay in bed for the next few minutes before I have to get up to change.

Thanks,

Marat

This end of financial year sales are killing me. Today was just way too busy for a Sunday.

Normally a Sunday is a pretty relaxed day at work but today was just chaos half the time. Plus it didn’t help to only have 2 salesmen on the floor (one of them being me).

Usually on Saturdays we have 3 salesmen, 1 cashier and 1 manager, but today which was just as busy as a Saturday we only had 1 cashier, 2 salesmen and 1 technician (who is out in the back 90% of the time).

I am so bloody tired, my feet and back cane. Don’t feel like doing anything tonight.

Maybe I’ll get another post happening later, I’ll see.

Thanks,

Marat