Hello everyone! It has been a very different week for me this week as I haven’t actually worked in the shop at all! I have had plenty of training, and I have learned a lot of new skills.
On Monday, instead of my usual picking of online orders, I was in the booking on department with Sharon. I have taught her lots in the shop and all about cigars and now it was time for her to train me fully. I always have been confident booking on Royal Mail parcels, however, it was time to learn to book on using different couriers. We use different couriers for different products, they include DHL, FEDEX and UPS – All of these on top of Royal Mail can become confusing. So I spent my day learning all of those different couriers services and i’d like to say I did really well.
On Tuesday, I was back to picking online orders. I have noticed a lot recently that people are purchasing the cigars that was originally a mystery one. For example last month the mystery was a Cusano Churchill and since then I would say I have picked lots since, it is great to see. Afterwards, I had a meeting with our SEO specialist, we discussed the C.Gars cigar library going forward and how it can be improved to help us be seen more on Google, which is always a good thing. He also showed me a very useful tool that shows me how many page visits each article gets as well as how far down the page they actually go. It’s really good to see how many people actually read what I write. Later in the afternoon, I started creating the newsletters for the other stores. I do enjoy working with the stores to see what they have going on and what they need promoting.
On Thursday, I was doing the New World stock count with Lisa. It was very interesting to see how much had changed as the last one we did was at the start of the year, just after Christmas, and you could tell we have had a big re-stock. We also received stock of a cigar that we had been highly anticipating – The Upsetters by Foundation Cigars. We had first heard news of them coming to the UK in August, but there had been plenty of delays since. So I quickly wrote and uploaded an article for the C.Gars cigar library introducing them to the UK – which you can read here. I am very interested in the Jamaican Cow Tongue tobacco that is inside them, it is a very rare tobacco to find and so I decided to purchase a cigarillo to try later down the line.
On Friday, I was booking on parcels again… But this time by myself! I haven’t ever spent a whole day booking on by myself and so it was a bit daunting, but I got through it and got all the parcels sent by the end of the day.
On Saturday, I was with Josh and Marcus. We quickly picked the online orders and then separated onto different tasks. Marcus made up some of the pipe tobacco samplers, ready for picking. Josh packed online orders and I used my recently renewed booking on skills to book them on. We were all a well oiled machine.
I hope you have enjoyed this weeks goings on and I hope to see you all very soon.
So long for now.
Oliver