Jonathan Ho
Essay #2
Winning is important to me. For many years, I think I like to study and learn in school for the better grade than people. Then I work in this summer, a job that gives me a real look of competition – experience is significant. I learned this lesson after I lost in a credit card competition and watching people getting more and more on one day.
I work in department store as a cashier. The store is about 30,000 square feet, where great many items are selling at a low price. The merchandises are brand name clothing, footwear and housewares. My working counter, which they called service desk, is next to the main entry, I can see the whole store from there. The biggest part of the store is clothing which held by hundreds of shiny steel racks and organized by millions of mini color-coded size markers on plastic transpicuous hangers. In the back of the store, all kinds of housewares on shelves with the bright light on the ceiling added to make them flashy and remarkable. Under the bright light, the shiny glasses have numerous of stars blinking on the surface, and the skin of the wooded decoration smooth like baby’s skin. Back to the busy service desk, the touch screen register and sensor hard tags detacher on the long-lasting grey counter are waiting to help the customers. In front of the service desk, customers in the waiting line are waiting "the register # is available now. Please proceed to the register #."
My job as a cashier is not that easy as I thought. At first, I thought that the things I need to do only are ring the customers, scan the merchandises, take off the hangers or sensor hard tags and put into bags. However, the actual is I always need to persuade the customers to apply the credit card in order to get my reward. Jake and I are new bees in the store and my manager gave us a little competition on credit card for one day. Jake worked in retail industry before and I am not.
"Hi, how are you" I asked to break the ice.
The customer did not answer. And I asked "Did you find everything okay?" Again, she did not answer and just took her purchases out. I tried to look at her face; she looked very seriously and her lips went down like curved bridge. She wore black shirts and black plants with sandals showing her black nails. I thought she was easy to persuade her to get a credit card by telling her that there will be discount because she had many purchases. My fingers were tapping on the counter and thinking should I ask. Within a split second, I decided to ask her "would you like to save 10% today by apply our card?" She gave me a look instantly and I was scared. Then I went back and tried to do my scanning. On my right hand, Jake got one credit card going on. He took the customers personal information and typed in the computer. The sound of the keyboard he made, as he is mastery on piano and playing happily.
At the end of the day, Jake got three new applications and I got zero. I was disappointed to myself because at first I thought it was easy. Jake saw me and told me. "I did it because I have experience I guess. But I can tell you a trick; you need to understand the customers’ need. For example, if the customers have many purchases, you can persuade them to get a card today because they can save money, and if they say no, you should try to look into their eyes and repeating the benefits again, and they will downfall into your pond." In addition, he told me that he knew because he was working and seeing people’s faces for a long time. I really learn a lot from the credit card competition although it was downhearted, but I really learn that experience is significant in competition.
Comment: I don’t really think this is a good narration although I think it is good description on the store.
