Weds 11th August
Ok so I got the date wrong on the two posts below. Sorry about that, date blindness has been haunting me since I stopped working - but, this post is going to be all about... yay, WORK!
For those of you who don't know, last week I actually got a call from one of these applications I've been making for jobs you see on these websites - I have been seriously suspicious of this, since I keep applying for them and getting no response. But, yay, last week someone called, and off I trotted on my birthday, and even more yay, I got a job. It's only for four days, so it's not leap screaming into the air, but it's a start, and better still, the agency tell me that they always look for their previous employees to fill a vacancy before advertising it, so (should this be the case, rather than simply something I'm being told) I may get even more out of it than simply 4 days work.
But, today I went off to the training. The job is a market researcher, for a company in London who do this sort of thing for various chains, and shopping centres, and frankly it sounded like fun when I heard about it, and now it's turning out to be serious fun having done the training. What I'm going to be doing is following people around in various different shops, with this little handheld computer thingy, tapping 'labels' - ie, lone woman, lone man, looking at item, touching item, measuring item, (it's clothing people, relax!) looking at the price, all that kind of thing. But all of this is done surreptitiously!!!! Yes, I'm going to be a spy!!!!! Oh I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't get excited, but I have seriously always wanted to do something like this! And it's not really spying per se - well it is, but not spy type spying, but it's sort of spy-craft. I had a go this afternoon, in the menswear department of a local department store, and for the first time in my life, my shortness has been a plus - I can lurk behind racks of clothes, and my eye line is just perfect for the gap between the shelf on the top, and the rail that has the hangers on! Everything I've read in all those Le Carre books is just perfect for this. I keep them in my eyeline, and 'follow' them by veering off the 'path' through the department, carelessly handling piles of t-shirts as I go along. God I am loving this job! I dare say I'll be fed up to the back teeth with it by the time Sunday comes, but in the meantime, I am having such fun!
It's not all following people. We also have to count footfall, which means going to the requisite shop, finding a place to casually lean, or sit or whatever, and draw an imaginary box around the door we are watching, then count the people going through the box, those that go in, those that leave, and if they're leaving do they have bags with them? This is not quite as much fun, but I imagine - provided I can find a little seat to do this from, a bit of a rest which will be very welcome. And yes, we will have to do a bit of asking people to answer a short survey. But the big news on this is we have another interactive gadget, so they will be able to do it for themselves whilst I hold the thing. Way better than asking people if they want to contribute to a charity via direct debt for a living. (Mind you not to say that this isn't also a perfectly valid means of earning a crust!) If there was anyway I could do this for my weekends for the rest of my uni career I'd be in seventh heaven, but alas, four days and that's it. Still, in the meantime I shall enjoy it!!
