Week 3
Date: Tuesday 9th
& Wednesday 10th October Total
Hours: 16
Finally, my project is getting kicked off! Tuesday I met
with Ashley at Speakeasy to go over the project I will be working on. I will be
helping Coffeesmiths revamp their online store. Coffeesmiths sells a variety of
home brewing items, but Tim is not happy with the online store. I have been
given a spreadsheet with all the items Coffeesmiths sells online, and my job is
to locate on the specs on the equipment. This way when the time comes to change
the website, all the information will be in a convenient place. I spent the
rest of Tuesday searching for the product specs online and partly filling out
the spreadsheet.
On Wednesday, I was at Chancery Coffee for the morning and
at Department of Coffee and Social Affairs for the afternoon. The idea was to
have me working in rushes all day. Chancery is the smallest shop catering to
take away. I was given the grand tour when I arrived, and a minute later, I was
tasked with taking inventory. This was something I had not done yet, so it did
not bother me even though it sounds boring. After inventory, I helped package
take away breakfast items and an hour before my shop switch I was able to get
on the coffee machine again. The assistant manager of the site gave me a little
rundown about where coffee beans are grown, and went back through the process
of pouring shots. Although, I had heard all this before, it was still nice to
have it repeated so it sticks in my head better. At noon, I was off to
Department.
At Department, I walked straight into chaos. The line was
out the door, and this was my first time working in this shop. The co-owner of
Coffeesmiths and manager of Department, Chris, gave me really quick tour, and
then asked me to do dishes and run coffees. This shop was the busiest out of
all the shops I have been in, but it took me back to working as a cook back in
the States. Orders were being yelled across the room, baristas were calling for
runners, and me doing dishes, was yelled at to get more forks washed.
Department is my favorite coffee shop looks and atmosphere wise, but it is
probably my least favorite to work at. The staff was great and funny, but all I
did was wash dishes for the rest of the day because it never slowed down enough
for me to do anything else. It was a good experience, but I would like to get
more practice making coffee.
While working on my project, I got my first real taste of
the metric system. I had to locate product dimensions and weights and record
them on the spreadsheet. I have not worked with the metric system much, so I
found myself using a lot of conversion websites to not only convert
inches/pounds to millimeters/grams, but also to remember how many zeros to add
when switching from centimeters/kilograms to millimeters/grams. I felt like I
should have known this stuff, but I did not. It is much easier than the way the
U.S. is doing it. Anyways, that was my fun cultural experience.
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