The last few shifts before a week of travel - Writing Wednesday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
On the day that you're reading this, I will be going away on holiday the next day for a week with my mum and dad. My older sister Alice has decided to travel to Prague with her boyfriend for a week too so we'll both be away around this time. Last week, as well as Monday and Tuesday of this week, I decided to work my final few shifts at Scudamore's before travelling. I will be working at the punting company during the autumn as well but because I went from doing the IB to doing river tours straight afterwards, I thought it was best to take a small break in-between, so that I could be refreshed and ready for the autumn season coming up.
There are two punting stations at Scudamore's, one at Mill Pond and one at Quayside, and they are both at opposite ends of the river. There are two different stations because the company can then pick up customers on both sides of the river, but the river tour guides can choose to work at both stations or at a station of their choice. Within the company, workers call Mill Pond, Steps because it has steps leading directly down to the station and they call Quayside, Bridge because it's at the start of Magdalene bridge. I worked 4 days last week plus bank holiday Monday at Bridge and I worked at Steps on Tuesday.
Bridge is possibly the more competitive station to work at when it comes to touting or sales, just because you're surrounded by all these different punting companies on the street. At Bridge there's Scudamore's, Rutherford's, The Traditional Punting Company, and Cambridge Punting Company, whereas at Steps there's just Scudamore's and Cambridge Chauffer Punts.
Working four days at Bridge was initially quite difficult because you really have to be on high alert all the time. I intended on only doing three days of tours that week and I didn't choose a specific station to work at but it turns out I was assigned Bridge for the whole week and this guy called Ollie asked me if I could cover his shift on Wednesday, so I ended up doing an extra shift as well. Although it was quite challenging at first, I quite enjoyed touting at Bridge in the end. On Thursday it rained quite a bit and I wasn't sure if I was going to get any sales because it didn't look like anyone was going to go. However, Jessica came out and gave me some guidance and I quickly found myself at the top of the street speaking to a group of four people. I did what Jessica told me to do and brought them down to the station, away from the competition and I was able to get my first sale at top box, the place with the highest footfall. Towards the end of the week, I was really pushing myself to get to the more challenging touting positions at the front and I was able to get more sales this way. Sometimes I was unsuccessful. I managed to bring this family all the way down to the station and just as they were about to pay, they changed their minds, walked out, and went to a cheaper company. It's hard when that happens because you put a lot of effort into persuading people but you've got to remind yourself also that not everyone is going to be your ideal client, people come and go, so you can't take things too personally. However, other times I was successful in drawing different groups of people in and as I was gradually getting the hang of it, I was growing to enjoy the chase of it all.
On Monday, 5 of us came to Bridge for the 10:30am shift. Because Saturday was so successful sales wise, I think the company thought that bank holiday Monday was going to be busy too. However, although things picked up in pace towards the end, there were a lot of people on the 10:30am shift sitting out because there were too many of us touting on the street and not enough people walking in. But this did give me a chance to speak to people. Somehow I got onto the topic of Wim Hof breathing with this tour guide called Oscar. He just sat down in a huff saying "Oh guys, I really don't feel like touting today. I only got £35 this morning, which sucks. Better try out my Wim Hof breathing!" And somehow we got chatting from there 😂. I also was speaking to these two other girls about gap years and universities. The person I spoke to the most that day and over the weekend was a guy called Nico. He is about 24 and he has been working at the company for 6 years so he must have started around my age. Apparently he went to Durham to study history after he also did a gap year. He sounded like an interesting person and we had good conversations too. He knew where Réunion was as well which was nice to hear! I hope to make some good friends during the autumn at the company, now that I've found my feet a little bit too.
Tuesday was my last shift. It was quite a quiet day as I only did 2 tours and not many people were out on the street. But as I had slowly gotten used to touting at Bridge, I was able to get some people at Steps too, even though I was quite tired that day. So it was a good few days all in all.
Now I hope to go abroad for a week. Stay tuned to see where it is I'm going.
Have you guys been to anywhere nice recently? Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!
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