Job description: Polyvalent operator

I have never really had a job, but I do have a strong relationship with my father and I often enjoy helping him at work. My dad has a clothing company and sells apparel for children and women that he imports from France and Italy. I have had three main responsibilities so far, ranked from the most to least interesting:

1.     Salesman

2.     Digital Marketing

3.     Data entry

I’ll describe them while giving an insight on my personal experience and lessons I learned.

·      Salesman

Being a good seller is harder than I thought, for it requires good improvisational skills in front of a demanding customer. It involves psychology (knowing what the client likes), economics (knowing how much they are willing to spend), and good rhetoric (giving them reasons to spend on what they like). Let’s say you enter the store. My goal as a salesman is to watch you leave with a few bags in your hands, to make you buy as many clothes as you can afford, while still being satisfied with your purchases. I must say I was not good at first: I was either too close from you, or too far, and never dynamic enough to trigger your desire to buy clothes.

As my skills improved, I found my rhythm: I notice a client enter, let them go around for few seconds before I offer help. Most of the time, I’ll be speaking either in French, Arabic, or both with my client. I ask if they need anything in particular, or if they have an idea of what they want, without trying too hard, making sure not to bother them. Paying attention to what the person wears can be helpful in deciding what to offer them to try, in terms of style and price. If the client’s budget is low, I make sure not to suggest too expensive clothes because that might dissuade them. Making suggestions is good but I must not forget the goal: sell clothes. Let’s say the client likes a pair of jeans, I show pairs of shoes that match, and if a particular size for a tee-shirt is out of stock, I make sure to recommend a similar one instead. Using these simple yet useful techniques, I can sometimes double the basket value. After completing the sale, I add the client in our database if they are new and wish them a great day as they leave. Although I don’t see myself becoming a salesman in the future, I found this job particularly interesting for it showed me that small things can actually make a big difference, and not noticing them cost me to underestimate this job in the first place.

·      Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is different. I am so familiar with social media that this activity was a piece of cake. I mostly promoted the brand on Facebook using ads, and the purpose was to incentivize online users to come to our store. Designing the ad is the first step, then it’s about who will see it. When I share it, I have to be very present online and reply to comments. Finally, I consider the information that Facebook provides about the ad to improve my results for future campaigns. Imagination was a key component, as I needed to offer attractive ads that will trigger the user’s attention, whether it is the font of the text or its size, every detail can make a big difference. Like for a book, a boring cover (advertisement) might be a turn-off, but a well-designed one invites the potential buyer to read the synopsis (come to our store).

·      Data entry

The last and most boring job I had to do is data entry, but I’ll try to make it more interesting for you. Being patient is necessary. I enter large sets of data that don’t need any kind of humanity or intelligence, and I particularly find it boring because it could be very well done by a machine, which I don’t think I am. I typically help the sellers give you a fast answer when you ask them: “I like this sweater, but the only size I found is too tight for me, would you have other sizes by any chance?”. So, on a typical day, I receive papers called “delivery forms”, containing information about the merchandise expedited to the store, or returned to the warehouse. I type all the data into the system such that it contains the exact merchandise that is currently in the store. To come back to our example, if we did not receive more of this sweater, then I won’t add anything to the system, and the seller might reply: “No, this item was so popular it is out of stock, but we might receive more soon!”. This job also includes some complications such as being unable to read a number written by another human being or not finding an item on the system because the description given in the delivery form is not correct.

Being able to work with my father improves our relationship and gives me a broader image of how a business works. The three jobs described above are parts of a wider range of activities that my father introduced me to (choosing merchandise, human resources etc.), having always thought that experience was essential to learn and progress.

Stats:

21,49 words per sentence (avg)

4.35 letters per word

Passive sentences: 0%

Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level: 10,93

Flesch Reading Ease: 55

How I killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, Mike Brown

I have read five chapters so far, and I surprisingly didn't get bored reading them. 

I first chose this book because it was the one which triggered the most my attention: the colors used in the front cover, the question used as a title, and mostly because I decided I really wanted to know how this planet was not anymore one. But even though I was curious, I rather had low expectations about the book, and thought It was likely going to be a long scientific journal written by an astronomer who uses complex words to make me feel bad for not understanding anything. I have to say that that astronomers can also be really good story tellers, because I have quickly been immersed in the life of a man who follows his instinct and uses his knowledge, to successfully fulfill his most profound desires, and achieve the dreams he had when he was younger.

Mike Brown is an American astronomer and professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who bet against the odds and the scientific community that there should indeed exist a tenth planet, beyond Pluto, one that has yet to be discovered. He had no evidence but knew that the telescopes used to find Pluto were far less precise than the one he was about to use in 1999. So he describes all the obstacles he had to go through, while informing the reader about interesting facts and raising questions related to astronomy, sometimes correcting false assumptions we have about the definition of a planet, or the size of our solar system. This long ride led him to two discoveries so far, one on them is Sedna, an object almost as big as Pluto, and the other is Diane, his wife.

Who You Are Matters.

               I come from this place, that some people think is a city, that others believe is a Spanish state, and that few have never heard of, but one that I think is really beautiful: it’s called Morocco. Unlike what you might have heard or seen in movies, my country is not only a land of sand, with camels, and people speaking languages you will never understand. It is also about modern cities with buildings and financial centers. Morocco is at the confluence of two worlds, and I have been myself raised in two cultures, the Moroccan one, that is more religious, with customs that are close to what we call the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region, and the French culture - having studied in a French school - got me to know more about Europe and the occident. This upbringing in a multicultural environment fostered my desire for freedom and pushed me to study in the USA. I know fairly well where I come from but saying that I know where I am going would be to lie, yet that doesn’t mean I am not going anywhere. At the moment, I would like to pursue a Master’s degree in France or the UK after graduating, and I am interested in corporate finance, audit, management, technology and computer science but I mostly want my work to enable me to travel. I plan to get there first by graduating from my bachelor’s degree, and do some internships to have a more clear career plan.

When it comes to how I am like my parents, I am meticulous like my father but also sometimes head in the air like my mother. We all love to travel, have a great sense of family and love to visit family members from time to time. What makes us different is the way we question the world around us. I find it necessary to question my religion and my beliefs while my parents don’t spend enough time in doing so.

Saying that I have developed expectations for myself totally on my own is not totally true, because of course, parents also have expectations from me, and before I even knew what expectations meant, someone had to set them for me, but growing up I learned that I was the only one knowing what I was capable of, and therefore that expectations had to be set by myself. One guy that surely knows how to set himself expectations, which is also one of my models is a filmmaker called Casey Neistat. He works with passion and this is what makes him successful.

I feel a special connection with wolves typically because I have the same deep desire for freedom they have. As far back as I can remember, I liked four particular trees at my grandmother's, because they were used as goalposts when I played soccer with my cousins.

My Rising Sign is in 26 Degrees Aries.
My Sun sign is in 25 Degrees Capricorn. 
My Moon sign is in 20 Degrees Taurus.

PS: for those wondering why the title is expensive teapot, it is just the literal translation of my name from Arabic.