Sales assistant Review

At first, when the placement started, it was fairly fun and all but slowly the feeling went away. I realized that working in B&Q was not going to be easy, I originally applied for the paint section but was posted in Gardening "due to being the right size for the job". I was dealing with a manager who wouldn't listen to me and give me the most ridiculous tasks.

In the beginning, the atmosphere was good and everyone seems friendly. Slowly the work politics came into place and new starters had to pick sides and you had to be careful. for example, there were two supervisors in one of the departments realized and they had their own rivalry going on, which I found unprofessional.

My manager when I first started was useless, as he never came in the day's I was time-tabled for or the time. The times we were on shifts he would just sit in the office drinking tea and giving me commands from the walkie-talkie or by phone. The only time he would come down is when the store manager was on rounds.

During the time there it would very i.e. on the weekends you would have to cut short of your break by your managers who would "time" your breaks by 5 minutes and then see them vanish for +15 mins on top of their time, sometimes it was so empty that we would just clean the dust off the shelves.

Due to my store being underemployed, I and my colleague had to rotate our shifts so we would work 40 hours mornings or evenings. Sometimes going over (50-60 hours) due to the manager just can't be asked to work or help out. Luckily when working in the evenings I would get interesting jobs like restocking and getting orders ready which I enjoyed and would end with watering the plants.

I feel like the only skill I gained was working under pressure and learned to work on logic so to understand the basic day to day tasks and how to prioritize them or being the only employee and run the whole department alone. Maybe these skills have taught me a lot but I would not have preferred the way I've learned them.

I worked in the garden section so it was to how we wanted to decorate the shop floor and how we felt, the back garden was beautiful with the amazing range of flowers and pots. inside it was slightly dull but we made it interesting by decorating it with gardening themed items.

The placement wasn't very well set up, I had to work for a week without any uniform and learned very late that I needed steel toe shoes. The set up for admin and etc was just too long. I had to drop off my documents 2 weeks after the interview and then started 2 weeks after that...

I don't think they did much, as I said above I didn't even know I was entitled to steel toe shoes till a few weeks of working their, sure their training program was long and very detailed but I don't feel that the managers were bothered to give proper training and feedback.

I would never want to work there again, or any of the branches. This store was a nightmare and was horrible. I just wished my placement would end and then I could leave as each day got unbearable. If they change the way their staff act and are then it would be a better place but still wouldn't work there.

My fellow colleagues did have outings and a good laugh at times but as previously mentioned the work politics just ruined the atmosphere so not many people showed up or just straight up ignored all non-work related events. There were 15 people working in my department and only 6 would show up, then I stopped too.

Since this placement was local to me it wasn't too expensive as I knew all the places in town. We would go for dinners, bowling or just a smoking lounge which was fun and enjoyable. The local restaurants were not too expensive either so it worked out for everyone. The only issue was parking when going out, but we would go in the evenings so it was free.

I did not go out clubbing or to pubs as I don't drink or like loud music but There was a huge variety of places to dine or for entertainment that we had available, that being said we would go out to other towns to see what they had to offer.

There were some but the managers would leave it to their other colleagues, I was once given the task to plan an event and I assume it went well. It was mostly going out for food or watching a movie. We were planning a football club after work but that soon ended.