MyStory

My first job was cashiering at NTUC Fairprice after my O level examinations. I was trying to kill time while waiting for the school term to start. I remember on my first day of work, I was assigned to this lady for my internship. She tried to communicate with me in Hokkien but as I couldn’t understand the dialect, most of the time I was left out of their conversations.

The first week of work consisted of following her around, making sure I knew the cashiering processes from collecting float money to printing individual sales reports. The easiest part of the work was counting money. I am glad that I did not have to ‘contribute’ to Fairprice any amount from my own pocket due to carelessness.

The hardest part of the job would be customer service. Being short tempered at times, I felt very irritated when I encountered customers who complained and demanded a lot. Some of them wanted to separate their groceries into different plastic bags, some unreasonable ones even wanted triple layers of plastic bags to carry their heavier groceries. However, I always obliged their requests because in the service industry, we have to tolerate such customers and speak to them in a nice manner.

I did not work there for a long time but I certainly enjoyed myself and learnt that cashiering is not an easy job. It is more than putting goods into plastic bags and collecting money from customers.

Article migrated from original My Story Portal 2007.
Author. Mantou28