Entering the real world - Lifestyle Monday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
I've been writing blog posts for a while now and a lot of them have been about school and my life as a student. I started writing casually at the age of 12 years old when I was nearing the end of year 8, and then I finished my final few student-life blog posts in May of this year, when I finished my IB studies as a year 13 student. Who knows if I will return to education in the future, but right now I am definitely getting a taste of the real world.
I didn't expect to get offered anything so soon after my exams finished but recently I applied for a job with a punting company in Cambridge. I applied because I wanted to get the job in time for the summer when there would be lots of tourists coming to Cambridge, and I also saw on the job advert that the position would be very suitable for young people taking a gap year, so I thought I would jump at the chance of giving it a go. The position I applied for was to be a history tour guide and punter on the river Cam and soon after I applied, I received a text message saying that I was shortlisted and that I would need to book an interview, so I did. During the interview though, I wasn't entirely sure if I was going to get the job because I was asked the rather intimidating question by the interviewer if I had any prior knowledge of the history of Cambridge University. Perhaps this was a question that I could have easily prepared for but there were lots of things to talk about anyway such as Ramanujan, Alan Turing, Watson, and Crick to name but a few significant individuals. However, all that escaped my mouth at the time was "well, I don't know much but I believe the university was established by a group of students who originally came from Oxford?" A fact that I remember my dad told me one time. 😂🤦♀️ There was a lot more that I could have said but thankfully the interviewer responded with "Yes, in 1209, you are quite right." So I got the job, sort of, there was just 7 days of training and an exam to prove my competency, to get through. I am in the process of doing all of that.
I did two induction days, one online and one in person. They covered the history of the company, health and safety, and boat handling (departing the punts to customers and signing them back in). There was so much information, most of it just went over my head if I am being completely honest. When I did eventually do my boat handling shift on Saturday, I was able to understand the information a lot more, having applied it to the real job. But I was able to meet a few nice people on the second induction day. Rupert is 20 and is attending a university in Wales where he is studying sports science. He is looking to work at the company as a summer job. Ben is 19 and is attending Edinburgh University and is also looking to work at the punting company for the summer. Marianna is 16 and is working at the company in-between her sixth form studies. All three were training to become cashiers instead of tour guides. There was also Alik who is 18 and is taking a gap year too. He will be doing the river tour guide training like me.
On the second induction day, we got the opportunity to go on a 45 minute tour up the river with a tour guide, who had only passed his exam a couple of weeks prior. We did this so that we could get a taste of punting and the service we would be selling to people. Considering he was still relatively new to the job, his tour was pretty exceptional. He gave lots of facts and even managed to integrate some of his own funny stories into the tour as well. That was probably the time when I got a bit nervous because I realised that the standards would be pretty high for me. Every tour guide that starts out, begins with the standard rate of pay and then after completing 50 tours up the river, gets upgraded to the grade they were given in the first exam. I reckon that at the very least, this tour guide was graded a good or even an excellent for his tour because it was really good. I don't know if I would be able to meet that standard but it was still useful to see how someone else had structured their tour.
The next 5 days of training were dedicated to river tour guide and sales training. We spent the first four days learning the knowledge for the tour and the last day doing sales training to prepare us for touting (giving out punting tickets) to customers on the street. Here I was joined by Alik as well as some other guys: Henry, the two James's, Harvey, Jack, and another guy for which I have forgotten his name 😂💜. Jack I believe is studying business and media at Sheffield University and the others, excluding Alik, are 17 and still at sixth form. My nervousness for the training did not occur because I was in a very male-dominated setting (everyone was actually nice), but rather because I realised just how difficult everything about the job was going to be. As soon as I completed the first day of RTG training, I felt rather overwhelmed. We had just finished covering the contextual information about the Wars of the Roses, the English Reformation, the English Civil War, and the settlers at Cambridge, and yet we still had all the historical information to cover about the university colleges. Not to mention, I had much difficulty punting. You'd expect punting to be the most simple and easy thing to do in the world; just stick the pole into the river bed and push forward. Yet I found myself, along with a couple others, struggling to push forwards and keep the nose of the boat on a straight path 😂. Alik himself kept saying "Shit sorry, I turned wrong way" when it was his turn. 😂😂 On my first day of RTG training, I even managed to get my pole stuck in a construction bridge 🤣. I lifted the pole in the air, ready to do my next push, and underestimated just how tall the pole was and got it caught in-between the ground and the top of the bridge. Thankfully an experienced chauffeur on his tour got it back for us, after my boat resorted to using our umbrellas to try and paddle us back to it 🤦♀️🤦♀️. The chauffer said as he passed, "don't worry, it has happened to all of us." On another tour, it even happened to Harvey for the second time.
Getting my punting pole stuck in the bridge, wasn't even the worst thing I did whilst training. On the 4th day of RTG training, we had a lady called Jessica coming in to teach us. Before that we had Leif, Charlie, and a guy called Eden helping us with learning the information and doing the punting. On the 4th day, we went out onto the river once again with Jessica to practice speaking for ten minutes whilst punting at the same time. I waited patiently as Jessica went through person-by-person, helping everyone with projecting their voices and perfecting their punting technique. I was one of the last to go and despite Jessica attempting to reassure me that it was all going to be fine, I still felt a little bit nervous. Jessica then told me to get a punting pole out of the box, and just as I thought I was handling the pole correctly, I turned around to face the boat and heard a huge shriek coming from Jessica and the others. I didn't realise that the end of the pole hit one of the customers in the head behind me 😬. It was a sunny day and things were starting to get a lot busy down by the station but I should have been more careful with what I was doing. Jessica went to get one of the managers just to inform them about what happened and I tried my very best to apologise to the man. I'm not sure he understood just how sorry I was for just having done that but I was genuinely disappointed with myself, having not listened to one of the main pointers I had been taught on my induction days. We continued with my 10 minute punting tour nevertheless and my punting looked the worst it had ever looked ðŸ˜. Jessica stood up with me and helped me with what I was doing. By the end of the day, my punting looked a lot better than it did before thanks to her feedback. However, the whole time I just wanted to cry and couldn't until the end of the day.
I got in the car that day and told my mum what just happened. At first she didn't quite understand as I didn't specify that the person I accidentally hit was a customer. Then when I got home, I started crying and broke into tears, as I explained the full story. My family were really supportive and reassured me that there was no malice behind what I had done. These sorts of things happen to everyone. I was speaking to one of my sister's friends at our Jubilee garden party on Friday and she said she accidentally spilled one of her customer's coffees on them whilst she was working as a waitress at a cafe in John Lewis 😅💜. I'm sure there are many of the similar stories to this too. However, one must learn the realities of life at some point. When you are young like me, you are going to make mistakes like this in your working life but eventually, you will master your craft. I just felt a little bit embarrassed I suppose because I was in uniform, representing the oldest and most prestigious punting company in Cambridge and I ended up acting like a clutz. But on my boat handling shift on Saturday, I did become more confident with what I was doing, after picking up the punting pole so many times for customers. I guess most of it just becomes muscle memory after a while and you just have to laugh at your own naivety I guess.
Day 5 was the sales training day, and that was also conducted by Jessica. I think overall, I was highly inspired by Jessica's character. She seemed like someone who had a lot of experience, was highly motivated, independently minded, and someone who would not take no for an answer. She seemed as though she could handle the male-dominated setting. I really learnt how to act confidently when it came to sales, because of her demeanour. During our training, we learnt about different types of sales: hot, warm, and cold sales. A hot sale would be someone who would be highly interested in what you are selling, a warm sale is someone who would need a bit of encouragement, and a cold sale would be someone who would not be your ideal client at all. We learnt about this because when we will do our touting out on the streets, we would need to prioritise the people we target, instead of trying to speak to everyone. The touting side of the job is actually rather competitive, even amongst the colleagues you work with because you are ranked on how many touts you are able to get in a day. Apparently, some RTGs can get £1,300 worth of touts in a day and the record to beat is £2,800! And so you really cannot afford to waste your time trying to speak to people who have already decided that they don't want to go punting. To practice this idea, we played a game. Jessica put different images of different people on the screen and told us to identify the hot, warm, and cold sales. A businessman with, holding a laptop, with his head facing the ground, was obviously a cold sale, whereas two women holding a map, with cameras in their hands were obviously the hot sale. And so you now understand the basic principle of touting. Towards the end of the day, we also practiced pitching the sale to each other. I think I did okay, I am just not that comfortable giving the prices to different groups of people yet, but perhaps that will get easier when I actually do the touting. Jessica just told me that I need to have more eye contact with the customer so that I can engage with them a lot better. However, I'm glad I attended this sales training day because I was already put out of my comfort zone and I learnt a lot from the experience.
When I was speaking to Jack on our boat handling shift on Saturday and he asked me how I found the RTG training, I said I found it quite difficult. He responded with "I know right? It's fucking hard! There's so much information to remember!" 😂😂 I'm glad that I wasn't the only one who found the training slightly overwhelming. 😂😂
This week, I will be practicing punting out on the river by myself. I don't know if this would be something that I will be continuing but I'm definitely going to practice to see if I can progress. Then I'll see if I can book a test or not. Nevertheless, I learnt a lot of skills on this week of training that I can definitely transfer to other career paths. And I was able to get a taste if the real world, after being so sheltered at school!
Have you ever been punting before? Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!
Comments
Post a Comment
Thanks for leaving your comments! I really enjoy reading your positive and constructive messages. They really make my day! 💜