Part-Time Job – Mediterra
I had an opportunity to work for Mediterra, a small company that began with selling organic olive oils and vinegar. I worked as the general manager, it was a lot of hard work. I was in charge of all inflows & outflows, accountable for all employees, responsible for inventory levels, and making sure all sales were met in a fashionable manner.
My case was a bit more challenging than expected because my hiring manager/owner had to suddenly travel for about a month, so I had solve and find solutions by myself for most occurring problems. At first, I was a bit worried since it was hard to reach my manager even by phone, but I had to boost my confidence to make sure all business operations were done appropriately.
The second week of operations when my manager was still away, our credit card processor stopped working during business hours. At that point, I was worried considering a huge sum of our transactions were paid by credit card. I had customers wait a few minutes while I tried to contact my manager, which I did not have any luck with. Next, I started to reboot all of our systems in hopes that it would just work. After rebooting the system, I asked one of the customers to give me their credit card so that I can try, but yet have I had any luck. After looking into the system configuration, I realized that the device that customer swipe their cards in was not responding. So after having the customers wait for about 8-10 minutes, I figured out how to take credit card payment, which was by inserting all credit card number manually into the system.
I made all employees feel comfortable working with me, which was beneficial on both ends mine and theirs. Having a cooperative and easy going team can ease business operations. As the general manager, I had so many tasks that had to be done and because of Mediterra’s business style, I had to drive quite frequently. I had to meet up with the employees during the week to give them inventory to sell. By effectively communicating, working together, and respecting each others times this task was made very simple.
Overall I had a great experience working for Mediterra and I actually enjoyed it. This position taught me how to rely on myself with confidence, take on responsibilities, the importance of teamwork, enhance my communication skills, organize & manage my time, and how to react to sudden problems. All of these skills are important to me because my career path is going to be in the MIS field where I will need these skills.