For my internship I will be working for my mom's boss. She owns a french cleaners and I will be internshiping/working there for my 20 hours of internship. I will be doing a lot of things starting with keeping track of money, talking to custumers, arranging things, being an assistant of any sorts. I plan on doing my internship soon, and possibly 2-5 hours a weekend. I chose this specific internship over the other possible internships because I want to be a entrepreneur and make my own business, so this oppurtunity will help me tremendesly. By the end of my internship I will have learned how to manage the business, all the information about owning a business and manage it.
Closing Report
As I look back at my internship, I am glad I chose my mom’s work instead of other places. Yes it is not perfect and I did not get paid for it but the learning experience and working under my mom was something that I would not go back on. From the moments of me dropping a customer's clothes to getting appreciation from a long time customer that I am doing great was just what I needed to learn how to work. During this time I have used various skills, understand my daily duties, and what I learned as well as my obstacles.
When I first came into the store, I didn’t really know what was going on and what I can and can’t do. Knowing what skills I needed to satisfy my time here was the first thing I had to find out. I needed to be able to clean, talk to customers, handle money, delivering clothes, basically just learn to cooperate and listen to my boss. Using those skills helped me to get this internship done, because these skills were the basic necessities of me being able to be useful. I also had to be able to be really quick and flexible because you don’t really know who is going to come and how is their day is going and what kind of attitude they will give you, so being able to be understanding and patient was really useful.
Knowing what I had to do was a must. Even though it was a really vivid internship I was doing, there were duties I had to do the moment I stepped inside the store. I knew I had to throw away the trash before and after work, also I had to make sure the place is always neat and clean. This internship was mostly dependent on who comes and what kind of things the customers need but there are always things that you have to do for the day. This was great for me because some jobs give you a straight out schedule but some just tell you to do this by this time and adapt to whatever the situation. Doing this job gave me both of these tasks and I am grateful for that.
I learned that people are all different and that some people can be really nice and kind to you, but some can be very cruel and be mean if you mess up or if you are slow. I also learned that there is no second chance with work, well there was for mine because my mom was always there to help me out but I learned that there is no job that needs someone who can’t do anything or is useless. Knowing that will really help me out in the future. My biggest obstacle was that I ended up getting sick during my third week of internship and even though the day wasn’t that bad, the sickness made it seem twice as bad. The clock was going slow, the customers seemed annoying and just everything was challenging for me.
The internship helped me out so much, and I am glad I did it. I went in with the expectation of it being difficult, so it was pretty similar. Even though my expectations were met, it wasn’t the same thing, thinking about doing the internship is completely different than actually doing it. You realize that your patience is much less tolerable, that you get bored easily and that people can be really mean and annoying.
Log #1
This week was my first weekend to work/intern in my life. I was excited and ready to start my duties. I had to be the counter person, meaning giving people their clothes, talking to them, taking their clothes, etc. Also on the side I was my mom’s assistant, anything she said, like cleaning the floor, taking the thrash out or going for food etc. I worked for 5 hours, from 10-12pm and then from 12pm-1pm was lunch and then from 1pm-4pm when my mom had to close the workplace. It was nice, of course it was little boring and seemed hard because I was constantly moving and doing things. I messed up a bit when I was talking to the customers but I ended up picking up slack in the end as I got used to it. The customers were nice since they are long time customers of my mom, even though I was little slow, they were really nice to me. My mom said that I was fine but of course since she is my mom, she went on to make sure I did everything as best as possible.
Log #2
This day was pretty much same as last week but this time there were more customers, compared to last week I would say almost twice as much customers came today. So it was a lot more chaotic but I managed to pull through because I knew that there were going to be a lot of customers because of my mom and also that because I had last week as experience I was fine. I had to do the same things, talking to customers, carrying their clothes and handing it to them and receiving their clothes, etc… After that me, my mom and her boss got something to eat then we got back to work. After lunch there weren’t as many customers that came. By the time we closed I was pretty tired but I was fine. I were pretty much used to everything around the store, well at least the basic/simple things. My mom and her boss told me that I was pretty good today because even though there were more customers, I was able to handle them much better than last time.
Log #3
Today I was a little sick going in because I think I caught the flu a little bit. I was thinking about possibly sitting this weekend out and then move on to the next week, but I just had to push it. The day was really tiring for me because the number of people who came on this day was the same amount but because I was a bit sick it made things twice as hard. Also because I was feeling a bit sick I didn’t feel like eating. My mom was thinking about sending me back home but I ended up convincing her that I was fine. When we ended up about to close the store, I just told myself, “It’s finally over, thank God”. My mom told me good job, and that I was strong for not calling in sick today.
Log #4
This was my last week being here, I am kind of sad that this is the last week because even though I was sick last week, I did enjoy myself here; but mostly I am glad that this is over because no matter the work, you would rather not do it than actually do it. I was able to work like a pro this week because I knew where everything is at and the prices for the types of cleaning. After we got something to eat at 12pm, the customers ended up increasing. I was very productive as one of the customers that come every Saturday told me that I got really better and that I almost seem like a regular now. As I help my mom close the store that day she told me, “you did a good job”.