Time for a catch up!

Firstly, I’d like to apologise for the lack of updates! Zak and I have been so busy over the past few months, it’s been hard finding a chance to update properly! We’re going to do our very best to restart our regular updating again. Starting from now!

On Monday 7th of December, Zak and I started working in the Retail and Catering department. We began our first morning with till training. Luckily, we’ve both worked in retail before, so got to grips with the system quite quickly. In our first week we learnt how to correctly store, price, replenish and display stock, as well as merchandising and keeping the shops clean. As part of this, we spent time at the Booth Museum, Hove Museum and the Booklovers Store in the Jubilee Library.

As I have worked in a Deli for the past two years, the majority of my time with the department was spent in the Pavilion shop, with Zak spending a lot of time in the Pavilion and Hove Museum Tearooms, as there was space for them to have only one of us at a time. It was great spending Christmas in a lovely and warm shop, selling Christmas presents to customers who had stories to tell (one lady was telling me about the 10-week Mediterranean cruise she and her husband were embarking on the next day. It made me very jealous!).

I only spent a few days in the tearoom at the Pavilion. I had a good time though. Everyone that works up there is so nice that it’s great just being around them. As I was there for such a short amount of time, I didn’t really pick up many new kitchen skills, but I spent time serving customers, making tea and coffee and washing up as well as spending a whole day doing stock-take. The way customers are treated and spoken to is very different to the way it is in the rest of the building. A great deal of care and time is spent talking to them about their visit and about their food to make sure everything’s right and that they’re having a good time.

On the morning of Monday the 18th of January, Zak and I began our Equalities Awareness training that concluded the following week. It was a very interesting course as it’s not really a subject that gets discussed very often and I learnt a lot. The course involved a lot of worksheets and handouts, which made the group think about and discuss language and actions appropriate to working for the Council as well as our own opinions, prejudices and attitudes towards minority groups.

On the afternoon of the 18th, I started working with the Functions team; Trish and Sarah. This week has been my favourite week so far as Event Management is one of my big interests. My main project for the week was coordinating a mailout to a number of businesses who had booked stalls at the Royal Pavilion Wedding Fair, which happened on the 7th of February. For this, I wrote a generic letter, then personalised it and addressed it to each of the businesses. I then made sure each business received an appropriate number of free entry vouchers, flyers and posters to help promote the event. During the week I also went on a number of site visits, in which prospective clients came to view the rooms in the Pavilion that are used for weddings/corporate events as well as attending an actual wedding on the Friday of the week! It was really strange sitting in on a stranger’s wedding, but it was lovely to see the building being used in a completely different way and it was a really nice event. I also attended a sponsorship launch in the Courtroom for a string of events happening as part of the Fringe Festival in May. The events sound really good and I hope I’m going to be able to get involved in the actual thing as everything that I saw looked amazing

After the second half of Equalities Awareness training, we began our three-week stint in the Bookings Office. Zak and I began by having a meeting with Joceline (who is acting Bookings Manager) to create a timetable for our time with her. It was great to have such a precise structure to our work and it was nice to be able to plan our time ourselves. We began the week by learning how to use the scary phones and the even scarier booking programme! Both have lots of buttons and codes and take quite a bit of getting used to. During our time in the office, we both attended Pavilion tours and Museum learning sessions to get a better idea of the events we were booking as well as doing work on the Pavilion phone system and website.

After our time in the bookings office, Zak moved onto Functions, while I went back to the shop for a week. The reason for this was to fill the gap while Zak was elsewhere, but also so that Marcus could come in and carry out the first of my observations, which are a big part of the assessment for our National Award. Unfortunately, the shop was really quiet during the time Marcus was around, which wasn’t ideal, hopefully it will be better next time!

We are now at the end of our second week with the Facilities Management team. I’m having a great time, even though it’s knackering! Over the past fortnight, we’ve found ourselves on the roofs and in the basements of the Pavilion, Brighton Museum, The Dome and Preston Manor, learning how to move the seats in the Courtroom and starting work on a big project to do with electricity usage, cost and sustainability that Louise has set us. We’ve also been on a tour of the Materials Recovery Facility in Hollingdean, attempted to use an electronic (sadly not sonic) screwdriver, spent a couple of days at the Booth Museum (which Zak has written about) and lots and lots of other things. Part of the Facilities Management job is dealing with problems and reacting to situations, so our stint in the department doesn’t have a set plan, which makes a nice contrast to the structure of our time in the Bookings Office. We will be with Louise and Robin until mid-April, so I’m sure we’ll be writing lots more about it!

This is probably a good time to say that Zak, John and myself were featured on Meridian East news (which meant it wasn’t shown in the Brighton & Hove area) a few weeks ago to tie in with the launch of the Council’s Apprenticeship strategy. I’m still waiting on a final answer as to whether the feature can be uploaded onto the internet for us to post here, but in the meantime, if you’re desperate to see it, the three of us all have a copy on DVD which I’m sure we can lend out.

Cassie