BMPIL Writing Challenge - Three Words To Describe My Job

Jun 24, 2021

There are 35 minutes left before midnight. I should be comfortable on the bed and ready to sleep but I can't put this off. Especially not when I'm moving out in a couple of days which might cause me to be busier and probably ending up not being able to write.


I kinda want to put myself to write daily as much as possible.


Some unrelated note. I've been spending the last hour trying to do a new pinboard for my sidebar and I wanted it to be anime-themed but I just can't find the right pictures so I made a chibi one instead. Also, this is actually the fourth-day topic, not the third day. I switch the third topic to tomorrow since the topic was what did I do today at work but I was having today and yesterday off. I decided to change it so it will be written from a more accurate perspective.






Before I go into those three words for today's challenge, let me give a short explanation about my job. This is my first time being a retail pharmacist and I've done this for almost eight months now. It's a chain business and usually in this case the pharmacist will also be the branch manager in which I am. I work according to shift - either morning shift or evening shift and have the weekend off. There are two staff under my supervision. The three words I choose to describe my job would be - retail, responsibilites and social.


Retail


A business setting is nothing like working in a government hospital. My clinical knowledge from my government experience does help but I still need to learn more. I needed to learn more to help me detect the signs and symptoms before suggesting a medicine. There are more choices too. Sometimes I'll discuss with the customer the options that we have and then they can decide which will they try. Of course, I will make a point to show which will work best though. 


These in turn also affected my stock inventory. Even tho it is a chain business, I still have much control regarding my branch stock inventory. For that, I need to know the trend and also keeping a tab of stock movements. 






It also challenges my interpersonal skills as I needed to be able to detect what kind of customer that I'm dealing with and what's the best way to approach them. It's challenging and it keeps me on my toes. But it can be super boring during slow days like during the whole Ramadhan and this PKP. As the customer lessens, the stock movement decreases as well. I just don't have much to do.


Responsibilites


As I am actually the branch manager, I was left on my own managing the pharmacy but I was blessed that I didn't actually do much as others might need to especially the more technical part. The technical parts were all handled by the headquarter - ie utilities, POS system, ordering with the supplier, logistic, and even dealing with a sales representative and do all those researches before deciding a supplier. But that was the technical part, the sales, training the staff, ordering monthly stock (we just sent our ordering to HQ and they will do the rest) and making sure the pharmacy is actually running is under my responsibilities. 


It was nothing like this when I was in the government hospital. I do have my own portfolio but it was repetitive and dull and having no chance in the near future to be needing to do other things. Dealing with the same thing, especially a non living thing day in and day out was taking such a big toll on me. I was on the verge of burnout not because of how tiring the job physically but how it is mentally. This job opportunity came just right on time. The newfound responsibilities gave me more sense of purpose and satisfaction. 


Social


I'm not a social person. My friends thought that I was being funny when I say this because they see me as someone who is easy to be with. But I tend to withdraw from people and only approach them as needed. You know when you feel like you need to talk to alleviate an awkward environment? I can do well in this situation but I usually just choose to keep quiet. This will of course affected how people be around me.


I think of being social as both my personality and also a skill. What this job does is that it brings out a different aspect of being social as I am constantly meeting new persons. Not only that, we've been having some regulars and that requires a different approach in socializing too. Including the staff at the headquarter, more direct contact with the managing directors and also the fact that I have trained seven sales assistant now, all of these unlocks more aspect in my social skill. I have actually taken it as a challenge. 






As of recently, I take it as a challenge to have an individualized approach in training my staff. Especially the younger ones. I used to have this idea that I need to train them all the same way and the slow one should just pick up. I restricted my social approach during tutoring and thought they are old enough for me not to spoon-feed them. I think this has affected how comfortable they are with me. I guess the ones who better suited to that approach are more comfortable with me. But now I tried to understand them better and modeled my social approach differently with the hopes that I can still tutor them effectively and they can still be comfortable enough with me so that we can have a better working environment.


I hope there aren't too many errors in this post cause my eyes are literally blurry right now. I'll proofread this later.



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