Day 3: First Assistant Position
Today two out of the three employees in the events department were out. So I was the backup. For the day I was Ms Christine’s assistant. I was shadowing and helping her with the rentals that she was working on as well as answering the phones. I was very scared to answer phones. I have been told my a few people I have some volume issues. Luckily the morning I had all of one phone call. I mostly was walking around the warehouse with Christine. There was a large last minute order that needed to be ready for Friday however some items still needed to be checked and we had to talk to the head warehouse man, Willy, to make sure it was doable. We first talked to Willy. Well they talked. In Spanish. I got maybe every 10 words. Really made me wish I took Spanish in high school. After she explained to me that Willy says that we can do it as long as everything is finalized today. However there was a few items on the order we needed to check.
We walked around the warehouse. We went to the linens to check for black ones that were a certain size. Unfortunately they were out on another order. Christine said it was an easy fix because we can just give them a slightly bigger size. We then went over to the walky place to make sure the tech that was being rented was in stock. That’s where I met Leo. He is in charge of the tech and he said he can has the equipment, but needs confirmation soon so he can prep it. Once we finished checking everything we went back to the office. Christine called the client to work out the missing items and finalize payment. I waited for calls and helped out if she needed me to go grab anything. In no time it was lunch time. I just sat at my desk and read.
After lunch it was time for Christine’s lunch hour. I was left in the office alone. Party time! Kidding. I read and waited for phone calls. Soon enough Mrs Butler came in with an assignment. They were repricing everything for the website update. My job was to look at the sheet with all the old and new prices and check the numbers. Make sure the correct prices were put into the sheet. That surprisingly didn’t take too long. After I finished that I took a few calls. Did my first transfer. I definitely felt like I was in a movie and a super fancy secretary. One of the calls I got was a woman asking about a pickup and saying it was missing items. Unfortunately Christine and Mrs Butler wasn’t around to help. I took down the woman’s info and went to go talk to Willy. In no time it was figured out and the order was fulfilled. I was so proud of myself for solving the problem alone.
After some reading time Mrs Butler came to get me to show me the fancy sound stage with the LED stuff. I am not a techy person. But basically there is a large screen that creates a semi circle and has a ceiling that you can project images onto and it looks like you’re actually there. So techy person or not, that’s cool. After some gawking and generally showing everyone there I am very new to all of this, I headed back to the office.
There was then a big issue that occurred. The large order that I was helping Christine with this morning turned out to be for a previous client. And not a good one. When they previous rented to him, they had $20,000 worth of damage done to their supplies that is still being paid off today. So although there was a large order, they had to make a judgment call as to what they should do and if it’s wise to rent it to this client. On one hand they could ask for a large deposit on top of the renting price as a sort of insurance. And if anything came back damaged obviously the client would pay for it. Or they could not rent it out. Although some may think that they should just rent because they get a lot of money and compensation IF anything is damaged, in the long term it would be better to not take that risk. Based on past experience with the client and their attitude, it was unlikely that if there was damage it would be easily handled and paid for. And if damaged they would have a large amount of furniture out of commission and unable to be rented because new ones would have to be purchased or fixed. So with this issue I learned how to take into consideration all outcomes and weigh the consequences. You learn something new everyday.
After that teaching moment, the rest of the day passed by fast. I just read, assisted and answered calls. Overall a very productive and successful day at work.
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