Workplace 21 - Family Engineering

I feel this will also be a short little post, I promise a job saga is coming! Those of you with A.D.D, this is for you.

My super awesome Aunty Bev works at a....place. An officey place. With office people and filing cabinets and carpet. And phones. According to my Aunt (who still works there and should know) it was and is called GWB Engineering. Fancy!
Memory of this particular venture is a little hazy (apparently I didn't pay much attention when I was 20?) but I believe that there was a huge amount of filing and archiving paperwork to be done so Aunty Bev got me in to do it. Later, when I was unavailable, she also got my lil sis Meg in for the same thing. We are handy nieces!

It was only for a few days but I remember it being an intimidating amount of paperwork to be sorted correctly and a vague concern that if I did it wrong Aunty Bev would be the one in trouble. All the offices filled with officey people were up on the first floor and I was on ground level which was quiet and cool and the work required concentration in an OCD kind of way which becomes absorbing to the right kind of mind. So it was pretty relaxing. And then Aunty Bev took me out for lunch - WIN!
Apparently food and success are very closely linked in my mind - Thanks Western Culture! (<- this is sarcasm)

No speculation of the type of people that might enjoy filing giant piles of paper - you know who you are. But maybe some ideas about looking to relatives for jobs. What contacts you might have that you don't even really think about. Unless your family is all in the same business, there could be a lot of diverse opportunities around you.

Workplace 20 - What The Home Wears

Earthborn. Aren't we all?
After some swift Googling, I can share with you that Earthborn is a Mum'n'Dad operation based in Brisbane. I did not know this while I worked for them and it has no bearing on the story but good on them for a succesful franchise.
What I did know was that the store was full of pretty homewares, smelt nice and was prepared to hire me.

For those of you unfamiliar with Earthborn, its a store at a bunch of shopping centres around town that sells candles, decorative....stuff, scented things, crockery, cute piggy banks. Basically a lot of ideas for gifts. And I recall it was all pretty decent quality.
I think I was there for a few months and I have positive feelings about the place so it must have gone well. I really liked a lot of their stock, and still do. Girls =like pretty things. It's pretty cliche of me, I know.

I remember one night we had to completely rearrange the store. It was a crazy amount of work and we were all there for so long but lots of fun. Good people to work with as well. The only down side I can remember about working at Earthborn was that you have to be really careful moving around the store as there is a lot of precariously balanced fragile stuff. And the store is CRAMMED full. Not a single inch of space wasted. No walking past people in aisles, that's for places with not enough stock. Suckers.  I honestly don't remember anything else about working there.
Oh, actually they had this cinnamon apple candle that blew my mind. So good. You should go and smell it.


So, in very short summary; This is a retail job. An enjoyable one as far as retail goes. The following people should consider/can generally be found working here:

• Students
• Interior decorators looking for staff discount
• People who have a real job but are looking for something to do on weekends other than have a social life
• Mums who's kids have finally moved out meaning they can do their own thing again
• People with no goals in life
• Contract workers between gigs

People who shouldn't consider this a great job:

• Anyone with a qualification to do something that pays more
• If you who can't smile at stupid people all day long
• Really large or clumsy or paraplegic people - the available space for moving around the store will not be your friend. Other retail stores might be better suited.
• Impulse homeware buyers - it's no good you paying them for showing up each shift
• Small children
• People who believe themselves to be Michael Jackson
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• Please feel free to add suggestions of people that should not work in retail.