Tag Archives: learning

Two weeks and counting

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been two weeks since I started working for The Co-operative, and I’m really starting to enjoy myself. There are a couple of people I have to give shout outs to, because they have helped me integrate myself into the shop and for teaching me all that I need to know. So these thanks go to, Sarah, Darren and Adam.

The past two weeks has been all about learning the role of a team leader and how they differ from the customer service assistants ( or basically, till ops ). My main duty as a team leader is to the store, while the CSA deals with the customers. Duties that I have to complete are such things as bringing out all the chilled stock and getting it out, reducing items, facing up, price checks, cashing up, sorting the tills and locking up the store of a night-time. There are more things on my list ( 27 in total ) but I won’t go and bore you with listing each and everyone.

I finally have my own uniform now, and it’s very comfortable. The down side to it is that it’s too big. I need a smaller size, but I suppose I could live with it.

On Friday, Adam and myself took a trip to Brighton to go on a training course to get a Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders qualification, which allows us to sell alcohol with out the need for someone else being present. That morning I was up at 4.30am, one of the earliest mornings I’ve had in a while, but it gave me plenty of time to have a shower and take my time getting dressed. We stopped off at a Sainsbury’s in Chichester on the way to grab a cooked breakfast, which was amazing! After leaving Chichester and got closer to Brighton, the traffic got real bad.Luckily though, I had the foresight to see ahead and we left very early. Even with the bad traffic, we arrived 25 minutes early!

The time we spent learning what we needed to be able to get our qualification was an excruciatingly boring one. The tutor was going over everything that we had to learn in the E-Learning just days before. However, he did manage to do this in a way that was entertaining and did lighten up the mood.

It’s official – I now work for the Co-operative!

Posted on by
Reply

As the title quite simply states, I now work for the Southern Co-operative. Today I had my induction in Basingstoke. I got to meet four other new employees starting at various times over the next few days all as anxious as I was.

The induction wasn’t quite what I was expecting. It was a lot more informal than what thought it was going to be. There wasn’t any definitive dress code but I went along in my shirt, trousers and shoes just to be safe. The induction, from what I experienced, is basically an introduction to the company, what other branches of it there are, and what is expected of me as an employee; pretty basic stuff.

I will be starting in my store tomorrow evening from 6pm until 11pm. I will be doing some “e-learning” after which, I will be taught how to work on the till and what needs to be done before closing up the store for the night. Although I already work there as a cleaner I’m now a real part of the team, which makes me quite anxious, but I’m sure I will overcome this quite quickly. Until then, I will be relaxing in the knowledge that I now have a better job, better pay and the prospect of management after six months!

Go team David! wOOp!

Learning how to ride

Posted on by
Reply

We took Chloé out for the afternoon to teach her how to ride her bike with out stabilisers. I found a nice stretch of path near the St. Catherine’s Park and ride car park that gets hardly used.

She’s had a while without them by herself, but I thought it was about time to actually teach her how to ride a bike properly. So I packed it in the car, picked Kate from work and headed down to the Park and Ride.


DSC_18957 Continue reading →

A New View

Posted on by
Reply

If you have been keeping up with me on Facebook or on Twitter, I recently bought myself a new lens for my camera. I have been wanting a new lens for a long time now. Specifically a telephoto lens as I want to be able to capture the kids much better while they are playing with out intruding.

I finally got the go ahead from Katie to buy my new fantastic lens. The Nikon AF-S VR 70-300 f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED. I picked it up from Jessops on the 7th September as they price matched the lens down from £439.99 to £419.99 for me, which was an awesome surprise, as I was going to be spending £421 buying it from Amazon with the next day Saturday delivery, so it ended up being cheaper!

Over the past few weeks I have had a good play with it. It’s extremely heavy compared to what I was used to, but is well worth the aching arm. I have captured some stunning photos of the kids and some wildlife.

Continue reading →

Driving – How’s it going?

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been almost four weeks since I passed my driving test and all seems to be going great. So far I have put over 1750 miles on the clock, 800 of which I had done before I passed.

I’ve experienced the long motorway trips several times now, which I do not like! As I have such a small car, I constantly find myself being blown from one side of the lane to the other, so now when I go on the motorway I tend to piss people off and stay between 55 and 60 mph. At this speed, the car is much more manageable.

Going to my mums in Kent was alright. We stopped half way on the M25, junction 8, which took us into Reigate. Lovely place. We stopped for about an hour and had what was essentially lunch at 9am as we were all up at 5am and didn’t have any breakfast before we left.

At present I put £25 worth of petrol in per week. The good thing is, I’m getting almost 200 miles of city driving out of that and I’m still left with some for the following week. I have calculated that even if prices go up to as much as 160p per litre, we should get be able to do the exact same mileage with only an increase of £5 per week.

I have noticed that I tend to have a heavy foot while driving and dump the clutch a lot when changing gear. I am told that this is not good for the car, so over the past week, I have took it upon myself and have been learning how to drive with a much lighter touch and have a much lower rpm. Although this is the way I learnt how to drive to pass my test, I find it very different in my own car, so a change is definitely needed to keep the car in tip top condition.

Ryan and his learning

Posted on by
Reply

Recently I was enquiring about some sort of skin or full on keyboard that had all lower-case letters on it to help Ryan while he’s typing out his blog posts. While enquiring, a friend offered to buy him a keyboard skin, being the cheap-o I am, I gladly accepted!

The keyboard skin arrived this morning and Ryan opened his gift.

Ryan as he pulled the skin from the envelope.

Sadly it is not of brilliant quality as I was expecting, but for now until I can get some money together to get a proper keyboard with lower-case letters actually written on the keys, it should do a very good job in helping him with his blog posts.

This is how it looks on my keyboard.

As a test I will be getting Ryan to post a blog later on today to see how he gets along with the keyboard skin.

Teaching the boy

Posted on by
2

Yesterday I decided that I wanted to help Ryan with his learning. The way I am approaching this is by helping him write a blog. Nothing over complicated, or too detailed. A few sentences to help him practice his spelling and how to write sentences. Obviously not everything is going to be perfect, but I hope what I teach him on the computer will translate across to paper and vice versa.

The aim of this little project I have under taken is not only to help with his spelling and computer skills, it’s also about documenting his progress as he grows and learns through the years. To prove that it is indeed him writing the blog posts, I have taken the liberty to record him typing his first one up. It took around 20 minutes for him to do this, so I have cut the audio and speeded the video up!

Although his post isn’t spelt correctly, it is legible and you can understand what he is trying to convey. The funny thing is though, if you compare what he has written, and then ask a 15-year-old to do the same, there wouldn’t be much difference with the spelling  and grammar!