This internship has changed my college path that will ultimately lead me into my career, because I have found that I do not like being at one place, and I do not want to own a business, unless it has me moving all the time everyday, because that is when I am happiest. I don't think this experience changed my college path, because I did not know what I really wanted to study, and I still dont, this has just helped me, because I now know that I do not want to own a business.
I feel that High Tech High has really prepared me for having jobs, and interacting. I am much more confident talking to people and taking to my mentor, and other employees, and before High Tech I already was but not to the extent I am today. I am very grateful to be going to a school like High Tech High, because without it, I would not be as ready for college and the career I will pursue.
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For my internship I didn't have one product. I had many products, throughout my experiences here, such as my Instagram posts, my manikins I dressed, the schedules I was able to make and publish with Ashley, and flyering cars, and finally recording all the data of the store. I definitely do not want to do this in the future, because I have found that I do not like being at the same place all day whether it's in the back office or just anywhere at the store, I do not like being in one place all day. It is not just at the store, anywhere. My favorite times doing my internship here were when I was able to flyer cars, because I was able to move around and I thought it was very fun. I thought this experience was very valuable, because I got to realize that about myself, and without this internship I wouldn't of known that maybe until I got into an actual office sitting behind a desk all day, and that would be horrible.
For my instagram posts, I first had to decide what I wanted our followers to see. We try to always have something for everything, once I figured out what I wanted to post I had to take the picture. We want our pictures and instagram to look as professional as possible, so we lay out these wooden boards in a way that it looks like a wall, and we lay out the pieces of clothing and it just depends on what it is, and how we lay it out, after that we take the picture, and usually it is not edited, and we figure out what caption, and hashtags we want, and post it. For the manikins the first thing I had to do was pick out the clothes I wanted to put on it. It usually depends on time of year and if there is a holiday or anything. So for memorial day I tried to do red, white, and blue. This was a decision I made halfway through doing the men's clothing so some of the outfits don't fit memorial day as well, But I have to pick out the clothing, dress the manikin, and write out a card with the prices of everything so people know what they are looking at. For the schedules, the first thing we typically did was copy the last weeks schedule in. Next we make sure that we take people off the schedule if they requested time off, and then we make sure that we have at least 25 hours on each day, and finally that we have at least 2 employees opening, and 2 employees closing. Flyering cars was my favorite task I was given. I was able to go to Downtown Carlsbad, and skateboard and flyer all the cars around there, then I moved too Downtown encinitas and I skateboarded down the 101 and flyered all the cars there, and finally I went to Solana Beach, and I flyered cars there. Finally I had to record the data for the store. This was a very easy, and quick process, that I had to repeat every morning I came in. There is a website called Basecamp Central that shows me everything that I need to write down, and every single other st0res data too so I can compare stores, and see what they are doing different. For my internship I did an assortment of things. From dressing manikins, to recording data of our sales and how the store is doing. The pictures I have above show examples of some of the stuff I was doing. The manikins that I took pictures of are the men's manikins that I dressed. I did dress all the manikins in the store so I had to dress the women's manikins too. I really enjoy doing this, because it gives me an opportunity to look through all the clothes that the store has to offer and pick out my favorite things, but at the same time I did have to put together some outfits that I usually would not pick out for myself, because I had to figure out what everyone else would like. This process was kind of tricky but I had a lot of fun with it.
One other thing I did was post on Instagram, I did not get to do this as much as I did everything else but I did have a lot of fun with this, because I got to see who liked it and peoples' feedback which was really fun. With dressing the manikins, I didn't get to know if customers liked my outfits, but with my Instagram posts I did and I thought that was really cool. I also helped Ashley make the schedules for a few weeks. I thought it was really interesting and cool to help make these schedules, because all I ever see is when I am working and when everyone else is working and I thought it was very cool too see everything that goes into it because there is much more that goes into making schedules than I thought. Ashley likes to have all the employees hours add up to 25 everyday. This process took much longer that I thought it did, but I had a good time learning about everything that goes into this. Every single day we have to record data on the store. This includes our sales for the day, our number of invoices, our avg invoice, the amount of money we spent buying clothes, and the number of buys. We have to write this data down everyday and write what we did the day before so we can compare it. This was a really cool process, because where we get the data, we get to see how all the other stores are doing and also compare to other stores. This website gives us all the data we need to see and it makes it very easy for us to record this data. To conclude all of this I had a great time spending my internship here. Although I found that it definitely isn't something I want to pursue, I had an amazing time getting to that conclusion, and it definitely was a learning curve for me. Throughout my work time at Uptown Cheapskate I have learned that I do not want to manage a store. The amount of stress that goes into owning and managing a store is something I just do not want to do. I think that I made a very meaningful contribution to my workplace. Everyone loves me here and I feel that I really made the instagram grow.
Some things I found that I really appreciated working as an intern would definitely be not having to wake up at 7 every single day, and being able to go wherever I wanted for lunch. I saw that everyone that I've worked with has a huge drive to get to work, and work all day, and that is something I want to work on. Maybe I don't have that drive because fashion is not something I really want to be doing all day everyday, and I am very grateful that this experience let me find that about myself, but regardless of not wanting to follow this career it shouldn't matter. No matter what I'm doing I want to be able to wake up and have a strong drive to work and get as much as I can done as best I can. This is one of the photos that I posted on instagram. This is an example of a photo that did pretty well. This is another photo I posted on instagram. This is an example of a photo that did not do so well. This last photo I posted is another example of something that does fairly well, but does not meet our goals. This is the back office where I spend most of my day, getting followers, following and unfollowing people, posting pictures etc. This is one of the many photos I took of the store, that are posted on the website. This one is just my favorite because it almost captures the whole store.
I think that so far I have really advocated for myself this internship. I have done what I needed and when I need help I am not afraid to ask for it, and I do. I listen to what I am told to do and I do it as best I can as as fast as I can to get onto the next project, because there is always something more for me to do, this is something my mentor has taught me throughout this experience; there is always something for me to be doing at my workplace and if I dont know what to do I can ask for help. I am following the advice as well as I can, and it has really helped me because although I have a job at Uptown I never knew how to do the majority of things I am learning. I am always doing something, if its mopping or posting on instagram or putting flyers on cars I am always doing something. Some of these tips dont apply to me, because I am not in such a formal setting, but everything that does has helped me tremendously. Learning to advocate for myself has been a big step in my life, and career, and in everything I do. I will always need to learn how to advocate for myself, and I am very grateful I learned this early.
My internship project is mainly to work on the social media for the store, but I am also doing visual merchandising. For the social media part I am taking over the instagram, and the facebook, and I am figuring out what to post for the store, taking photos, and posting. For the visual merchandising, I am basically just dressing all of the manicans in the store. The skills I will need include knowing how to use social media, knowing what people like, and knowing how to put an outfit together, for men or women, and I feel like I know how to do all of those things, so I feel like this internship would be a good fit. I dont need very much support from anyone, with the things I am doing. I want to take the leadership role and do this by myself.
I am the owner of the store. When I come to the store in the mornings, I have to distribute cash to all the registers, get the music playing, turn the lights on, and open the doors. After all that I have to take some notes on our sales and buys and inventory. I worked in New York City in real estate, but I always knew I wanted to move back to California to start a family. My husband got a job offer here, and he took it. I finished out my last year in New York and made the move. Our family friends own two of these stores, and thats how I heard about it, and I knew it could be an option for me and I took it. I would consider a job in this field satisfying, because it combines everything I love. Clothes, being the boss, and human interaction. The purpose of Uptown is for people to clean out their closets and sell their clothes that aren’t used and put them to a better cause. Uptown is also a cheaper alternative for nice quality, and trendy clothes. To be successful in the clothing industry, especially when I am buying clothes all day for this store would be to expand my views and buy things that I think others would like that I may not always like. To be able to get along with others, is probably the most important thing in owning a business like this. People love good customer support and if they cant get that then it is a huge turnoff.
I don’t understand too much why we are always taking notes on the data of the store, and comparing it. I have been able to connect my communication skills that I have learned in school from so many presentations to this store, because I am always talking to people. I have learned that it is all about recycling, and reusing. I have not found any new skills I need to develop, but I do feel like I have been developing my communication skills, my note-taking skills, and my math skills, because those are the things that I am doing all day. I drive myself to and from this internship, and I am really enjoying this commute because it is just up the street from my house. To start off, my first two days of internship have been amazing. One thing that strikes me the most about my internship, would definitely be how at random times there will be waves of people coming in, non-stop. Mainly throughout the day it is pretty slow, but it definitely picks up at the most random times. My colleagues at the store are amazing. They're super fun, and somewhat close to my age. Everyone has high energy, and is very fast paced. Everyone just seems super excited to be working.
There is so much I could talk about at the store, but one thing that definitely strikes me the most, would be the diversity of customers in there. The type of people that come in range so much, and it just varies from day to day. One other thing that strikes me is all the different styles people have. It is honestly really fun, and amazing to watch so many different people come in and buy different outfits, and being able to see all the different styles is very fun. I am so excited to continue my internship at the store, because it is very fun for me to be able to do things I would not normally do there on a day I would be working. I do enjoy working at the store, but I definitely enjoy learning how to manage a store, and manage the social media, and maybe even a website. I am not really worried about anything so far, internship seems very clear to me at this point but something could pop up out of nowhere so I will have to wait and see. A typical work day at this site is usually slower throughout the morning on weekdays the people that typically come in during this time are usually older, and they don't work.During the afternoon time we start to pick up and the people that come in usually vary we have older people and teenagers and even sometimes children. I work at this store usually on Sunday's, and Monday's, for those days I will be tagging clothes that are bought by Ashley and I will be hard tagging them and hanging them. For internship I will not be doing any of that I will be writing a lot of reports for ashley about the amount of sales we did for the day, and I will be learning the buying process and what goes into buying clothes for the store, and I will be learning to manage a store.
The business is generally pretty strict about being tardy and missing a day, but Ashley is very understanding if something pops up, that is important and does not have a problem if someone can't make it. She is not so relaxed about it though that it feels like we would be able to just skip a day and just not work. She does not like sitting, or phones out while we are working, but if it is dead and everything is finished then we are able to use our phones but still we are not allowed to sit. For Uptown Cheapskate there is no dress code, we are a clothing store and she does not mind what we wear because she likes to see everyones style and she loves seeing how people express themselves. I personally love having no dress code at work because it saves a lot of time and is way more comfortable. I have worked at places where I do need to wear a certain shirt and jacket and then black pants and black non-slip shoes, and it was horrible. I hate uniforms with a passion, and I love not having to worry about one. My career day was very fun for me because I got to do things at the store that I don't normally do. Yesterday I worked on social media marketing which was mainly instagram so I was posting pictures and I was cleaning up the account and making a plan and taking pictures and giving them dates they needed to be posted. As soon as I came in the first thing I had to do was put money in the register and then record how much money was in each cash register. The next thing I do is turn the music on and turn all the lights on. I worked mainly in the back office the majority of the day, doing social media, and when I wasn't I was out with ashley and she taught me the buying process. By the end of the day, I had to record the ending tills. So I counted all the money up, and put it in to the computer and then write it down on the paper. To conclude I expect the professional world to be there really fun. I am very excited to be able to work everyday for a month because I really want to be done with school and be able to work and live my life so I am very excited. With the classes I am taking right now I am able to find a skill I can use and apply to the real world, and this career day and internship. In math, the skill I am able to use is just being able to work with numbers, whatever I do I will need to be able to use numbers and work with them, and with my career day and internship I will be writing reports which is a lot of numbers and work, and I will be counting up the money at the end of the day. In my humanities class, I am not able to find anything to use in history, but in english I am able to learn how to speak with people and communicate very well, because I will NEVER escape talking to people. With this job I am doing I really do need to talk to people all day, because I need to help them with dressing rooms and find them what they need, and check people out. In biology, I could not find anything biology related, other than being able to take great notes, and being very good at taking instructions well. Being able to take instructions very well will really benefit me because I am able to do what I am told. |
Ryan TortiI am a High Tech High 11th grade student, and here you will find updates and reflections about my career day, and internship. |