Since meeting with my supervisor, I feel that our interactions and relationship have generally become even more cordial and have extended beyond the regimented interactions of the workplace. For example, whenever I’m at work and we say hi, there’s often a joke or something that lights up my day. This experience has shown me the importance of bringing my whole self to work and putting in the effort to forge connections with those in the same workspace as you. It not only makes work more enjoyable, but it establishes a sense of trust within the community that really important because it means that you have a mutual agreement to help each other out. When one person is feeling down or tired, you know that you have someone you can rely on because you know you would do the same thing for that same person if the roles were reversed.
While there’s not much of a direct relationship in terms of the skills that I’ve earned while at Weshop in what I want to pursue, I think that my time at Weshop has undoubtedly helped me work on mindset and develop important skills that are important in every single field as they are more associated with a mindset and character development. For example, I’ve learned the importance of being able to distinguish between personal and professional work, so that I can complete my job to the best of my ability. But I’ve also as I mentioned in the paragraph above, uncovered the importance of bringing yourself to work every day, rather than simply showing up to get paid or make a salary. While scanning items over and over again can seem tedious, Weshop has also taught me how to stay engaged and find a way to make any task interesting. For example, one “game” that I like to play with myself on the clock is trying to memorize where the buttons for each item are on the register as well as try and remember where all the barcodes are on the various products. For example, the drinks tend to have a vertical barcode, whereas the chips usually have one on the lower left, on the back. I feel like this is a really important outlook that I’ve developed as it will help me do my job better, and also make it more fun.
In terms of the six Ideals into Practice competencies, I think that I’ve developed in all aspects, however, I think that I grew the most in regard to Collaboration, Communication, and Socio-Cultural Awareness. Most of these all have to do with a similar part of the job. One of the most essential portions of the job is the interaction with customers. Though our interactions usually don’t last long a minute and at max five minutes if they’re doing a big shop, I get to interact with so many different types of people and students on campus on a daily basis. I take this as an opportunity to get to know other people and understand them better through their shopping habits and the words exchanged during our 5-minute overlap. It’s also super fun to get repeat customers, as while you don’t really know them, you get to know them in a certain way which is really cool as it shows I can forge a relationship with literally anyone.
