1.
I am applying for the full time experience assistant
position.
2.
I am applying for this role at the Science Museum
because some of my most treasured childhood memories were created there, and if
I could have some small part in creating family memories for anybody else, I
could go home happy.
My previous work experience makes me a more than
suitable candidate for this role. My time at Costa fine-tuned my communication
skills, as well as giving me the ability to work well under pressure, and be an
effective team player. Costa also taught me the importance of working quickly
and accurately: nobody wants a flat flat white. My time at Odeon gave me the
opportunity to interact with every kind of guest, giving me confidence in my
abilities to interact well with people of all ages. This position also taught
me an important lesson in how attitude impacts your workday: it doesn’t take
much to make a guest’s day, so you might as well be as positive and friendly as
possible. Working at VX, I came in with no knowledge of how to do anything; I
couldn’t make coffees, and I had never been any kind of chef, let alone run a
shop. Within two weeks of learning on the job, I was trusted to run the store
without supervision, also proving myself to be trustworthy in regularly taking
large sums of cash to the bank for my manager.
My university career taught me the importance of time
management, especially in completing my final year dissertation which also honed my online research
skills. I am Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook and
most importantly; I love science. The most fun I ever had at school was after
school science club; my closest friends, the weirdest, coolest teachers, and
more goo experiments than I could shake a stick at. The older I get, the more I
realise how useful my science knowledge is to myself and others, whether that’s
running pint glasses under a hot tap to separate them when they get stuck
together, or answering my family friends’ kids’ endless questions like ‘How is
thunder made?’ and ‘How does the microwave do that?’. There is such joy in knowledge,
and science is the most useful and fun world to learn about.
3.
To start, some background information. I worked at Odeon
through Star Wars: the Force Awakens. As soon as the shutters opened in the
morning, guests were flooding in to get their tickets and snacks and blast off
to a galaxy far far away; the cinema stayed incredibly busy all day. This not
only made guests stressed as they were surrounded by seas of people, but it
made some team members stressed to the point where they would not turn up for
their shifts. We were constantly short staffed, and it was loud all day every
day, for months.
One Saturday was particularly challenging; of the
twelve ROTA’d staff members on the retail counter, only myself and three others
had come to work. We all agreed not to have a break until there was more staff
to support the rest of the team. As soon as we opened: chaos. The lines never
shrunk. We just had to keep going and going and going. There is a point in the
panic where your multitasking become more like a ballet than a retail position,
interchanging between shoveling popcorn, entering values on the till, and scooping
rock solid Ben and Jerrys Ice cream, all while holding a conversation with an
excited seven year old about their favourite characters in the franchise. My
shift started at 8:45, and I worked until 5pm without a break. Just as I was
going to clock out, I overheard a guest asking another team member if they had
any of the ‘other IMAX posters’, which my colleague knew nothing about. I told
the guest to wait where he was and ran downstairs to the womens changing room
where I remembered a small stack of each poster had been left for staff. Needless
to say he was thrilled.
At Odeon, we were encouraged to hand out review cards
with our names on so guests could tell us how their service was. To save time
on this day, I stopped asking guests to fill out the online form, simply
leaving a pile of cards at my register for them to take if they had the time or
inclination. The following week, my manager pulled me to one side and took me
to the corridor where they printed out positive feedback from the website:
there was almost a whole wall of positive feedback left about me. She also told
me a man had emailed in to let management know about me running to get him
posters from downstairs. I think I can pinpoint this moment as the catalyst for
me always striving to give good customer service; I didn’t have to have a chat
with the guests or work through my break, but the fact that so many people were
thankful that I did made it so worthwhile.
4.
My home town has a fairly well known community of
homeless people, some of which regularly came to the store to read the paper,
get out of the elements, and have a glass of water. On shift at Costa, a guest the
team knew was homeless, was asking about the festive hot chocolates we offered.
He was really struggling to make up his mind on which drink he wanted, stating
that he didn’t want to be boring and get a plain hot chocolate, but the festive
options didn’t appeal to him. Coffee chains are not cheap: a festive hot
chocolate is at least £3.50 which was out of my budget as a student so I could
hardly imagine it was an easy spend with no regular income.
After a while deciding, the guest ordered a black forest
hot chocolate, even though he had just stated he didn’t like cherries and didn’t
want whipped cream. I said that if he was going to get a hot chocolate it
should be a flavour he’d enjoy, there’s nothing wrong with a plain hot
chocolate. I’d served this guest before and had no problems with him, we’d
joked and had a chat a few times. As I was putting his order through the till I
joked ‘Final answer?’. Out of nowhere he got really angry and slammed his hands
on the counter, telling me to ‘Just make the bloody drink already, Jesus!’. I
was really taken aback, not just because he had raised his voice at me, but
because I really didn’t see that kind of behavior coming from him. I made the
drink. I set it down on the counter and said thanks, walking to the other end
of the shop floor to fill out paperwork. He followed me. “I’ve made you upset haven’t
I, I can tell you’re upset.” I said I was just busy and kept working; it wasn’t
really worth it to say anything. He didn’t go away, he stood on the other side
of the counter. I eventually asked him if he needed help with something and he
told me I looked like I was going to cry. I started to get a bit annoyed at
this point and just wanted him to leave. I told the guest if there was nothing
else he needed from me, he could go and take a seat.
I don’t know why he was trying to get a reaction out
of me, but I knew that staying calm was the key to making him leave me alone.
Sometimes people don’t even realise they’re making you uncomfortable but regardless,
it’s so important not to crack under pressure.
5.
My favourite object in the science museum is 100% the
astronaut suit. Whenever we had a school trip to the science museum it was my
go to piece to write about or draw. Space is so endlessly intriguing to me and
the trials of creating the space suit are not to be overlooked. I think the
socio-political history surrounding space travel and the space race is so
fascinating, it’s such an important part of our global history; the astronaut
suit is the embodiment of that time in a single glance.
