You can find information about the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge here or read the rest of my A to Z posts by following this link.

We are nearing the end of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge now, and it all seems to have passed really quickly!  Today’s letter is W and today’s topic is Work!

I have worked in many different roles since I was old enough to have a job.  I started out working part-time, mostly Saturdays with the odd weekday thrown in, as a photographic assistant in a shop that processed and printed photos for the public, taking in 35mm film and turning it into negatives and then checking the images before printing.  The place I worked at also had a studio upstairs that families would book for occasions and have their photos taken.  It was one of my favorite jobs.  You never knew what images you would find on the rolls of film that were bought in!

After that I worked in retail, stocking shelves, stock taking and serving customers in a budget store that sold pretty much anything that you could shove a price tag on.  I wasn’t really keen on that job, the shop was dirty and smelly and had so much stock piled haphazardly in the store-room that you took your life into your own hands even opening the door.  The hours were long and the lunch break was short and we would often be shouted at for things that we had or hadn’t done.  That was probably one of the worst jobs I ever had.

I have worked in many call centres, taking orders for catalogues, chasing payments, working for insurance brokers, gas, electric and phone suppliers and in customer service where we would phone customers we had supplied with goods to check that everything was ok and they were happy with the service they had received.  I worked on so many different campaigns and for different team managers and the whole experience was very mixed.

I have worked in several pubs, a few being family run affairs and another being a big chain.  I preferred working for the smaller, family run pubs, the atmosphere was always warm and welcoming and we cared about the people who came through the doors.  We would always have a chat with the people we were serving and really got to know them and it was a pleasure to call them friends.  The chain pubs were totally different, management only seemed to care about what went in the till, not so much on the experience for the customer.  Everything was rushed and it was always really stressful when on shift.

I worked in a bank, behind the scenes opening business bank accounts in the night.  that was a fun job as we had to cross reference business names in a directory and if the name had already been used then we had to run a program that came up with similar names (a bit like when you want to open a new email address to find the name had been taken), some of the names that came up were quite funny and the suggestions the program threw out were even funnier!  I wish I could remember them!

I worked in a supermarket as a sampler – the person who prepares new food and lets you have a sample in the hope that you will buy it!  We didn’t just work with new food stuffs, I worked demonstrating toys and beauty products too.  I really liked working to promote the beauty items, whether it was a new toothbrush, body spray or shower gel and always seemed to get really good sales results for that part of my job!

I had a job as a cleaner which I used to work first thing in the mornings ( 5:30 – 7am) in an office block.  There was something both eerie and calming about being in offices before anyone else was about.  I used to empty the office bins, hoover, clean the conference room, dust, wipe down desks and clean the kitchen as part of my job role and I really enjoyed it.

Right now, I work as an admin assistant as part of a payments team for a medical company.  The job itself doesn’t differ much day-to-day but the banter and the people who I work with (some are part-time) help to make the days go faster.  It’s not a job that I ever saw myself doing, and if you had asked a teenage me where I would be in 10 years, 15 years or longer, I doubt very much that I would have said that I would be working in an office processing payments, but I also think, back then I didn’t really know what I wanted to do!

What work have you done in your life?  I would love to hear about it in the comments!