During the winter break, I decided to start having a small job in Vijitha Yapa Bookstore. As someone who likes books a lot, I thought this would be an insightful experience working at one of my favorite places ! After visiting the place, I realized that this is the place I want to be working at just whenever I’m free.

4th January 2023

My first day. The question that was in my head 24/7 before I get there was “What am I going to do ?”. Well, I now have an answer !

Since it was my first day, I was told to look around and familiarize myself with the arrangements. This is so I can see how things go around here as I will be working here from time to time.

No matter how boring it sounds, it was actually pretty interesting as I can learn how things happen here since I learnt that my job in the future is to give people recommendations when they ask and to look at the database on the computer.

For preparation to give people recommendations when they ask, the store employees gave me a little booklet that describes all the books that was here in this place, from the genre to the plot.  Which is very beneficial for me to see and remember from.

Even though not many people came (because it was a working day), it was very fascinating time as I learnt more about how to work in a place I love to go to very much ! It’s also something that can keep me busy during any holiday break, which is very nice to realize !

5th January 2023

Instead of going in the morning, I decided to try going in the evening to see if anything (eg: the amount of people) changes. Turns out that more people did come and that I also learnt something new to do in my future shifts.

The beginning of today was the same as yesterday. I did more familiarizing since they have got some new books after I left yesterday. But also I wanted to jog my memory now that I learnt from the booklet (except my memory is really bad).

I did end up asking after being scared for some reason (trust me, I really don’t know either) and they taught me to use the cashier through their system, which honestly is was really enlightening for me ! I wanted to know how the cashier in bookstores really work as an employee and now I know, a very nice feeling if I say so myself !

I stayed at the cashier area until 6pm (when they close) and bought the book that was on my reading list for a while.

I would say that this shift was an important one because I now found the job I wanted to settle for here. Now I have an idea of what I will do for my next session on the 10th !

10th January 2023

My last day (until I have more time due to schoolwork). Although I didn’t go to the cashier as I thought, I actually had a pretty interesting job today.

I was called over to help sort out a bookshelf of academic books by category. I had 2 others (including the manager) helping me as well, which was great since there were a lot of books needed to be sorted. After 1 and a half hours, they were all sorted. We just needed to organize them onto the shelf. It was hard since we were worried there will be no space, but it did pay off.

Lots of Collaboration !!

These 3 days were absolutely amazing as it felt really nice working here. I always wanted to work in a bookstore, so it actually happening felt like a dream.

Collaboration was a big part of this as I collaborated with the other employees in many instances. Whether that was sorting out the books based on categories or the manager communicating with me on what new books they bought and are selling at the moment, it was a group job (despite the many roles here).