Going to an Interview

Tell me about a time you went beyond and above the call of duty: I was working at the Central Park Deli and Grille in Oldsmar, Florida as a cashier. The deli was located close to a relatively large business center just outside of Tampa. The deli would normally get slammed packed from about 11:30 until 1pm every weekday. As a cashier I mainly had just one job and that was to take orders through phone calls and face to face orders. At a certain point we got backed up on the orders and were in over our heels, as long as the cooks could keep up we would be able to get the food out fast enough. But this time around our delivery driver was struggling to get the food to the customers in an efficient manner. I had noticed that the calls were slowing as the business lunch day was slowly ending, so I decided to let my co-worker who worked beside me at the cash register continue alone. I grabbed as much delivery orders as I could and took off to deliver the food in a timely manner. We were back on track and finished the day smoothly without any complaints.

Tell me about a mistake you made and how you handled it: when I was working at Central Park Deli and Grille, it was one of my first shifts I ever did. A customer came up and I took the order no problem until the payment. The customer proceeded to swipe his card and signed his check but I had accidently ran the order as a free one so the customer did not get charged a dime. When I realized I had made this mistake I decided I didn’t want to make a bad impression on the customer and went back through and paid out of my own pocket.

What do you do if you disagree with someone at work?: for me the way people look at you is everything. So I refuse to argue with a fellow co-worker in front of customers and or other employees. I also tend to go with what the co-worker wants to do because if one of us is not on the same page it could potentially hurt the business in addition there should be no negative emotions between workers. If I do get time I will go sit down with the manager and describe what is going on and what the next step should be. After talking to the manager he/she will come up with a solution that will fit us best resulting in no conflicts between each party.

Give an example of an occasion when you used logic to solve a problem: When I was working at the Central Park Deli and Grille we had to get there about a half an hour before the doors open to start all the prep for the day. We had a food delivery that wasn’t supposed to come until a little later in the day. The driver insisted that the food must be paid for on the spot and the manager was not there to write a check. I thought about grabbing the money out of the register but then we wouldn’t have had any change for customers, so I decided to use my own money to make sure this issue wouldn’t affect the day.

Have you ever been in a situation where you didn’t have enough work to do: Yes, working at Central Park Deli and Grille we had a huge lunch crowd and then shortly after the amount of customers would drop. Every now and again there would happen to be those times where almost no one would come in after lunch. In the meantime I would go ahead and start taking out the trash, cleaning the bathrooms etc… to go ahead and get ahead of schedule. Not that I wanted to close early it was just something to do, plus when it was time to close the workload wouldn’t be so much.

It is hard to act as a manager and review this information because it is a little bias looking at your own work. But if I was a manger I would be happy with what I read because for instance with the food truck wanting a payment sometime a manger isn't present to make a payment and it would be nice to have someone to be able to step up and get it done. As a manager I would also be pleased with the worker stepping up and taking deliveries when they needed help, there are a few different kind of workers in the world, some would see the problem and fix it and there is a few that would step back and no take action.

Week 11 ENG 301 HW

      My first semester at Arizona State in my W.P.C. 101 class; which is a class that gives you a basic understanding of how the school works and certain tips on getting jobs, I got to make my first resume. I learned a lot from this class as far as what is needed in a resume and how it should be layed out. The problem is that last year I accidentally broke my laptop that had the document saved. So I am very excited to get started on the employment project because I will need it this summer for a summer job.

     "Your resume has to look professional. When employers look at a resume, they see the documents they will be reading if they hire you. Resumes should appear neat and professional." (Markel page 405). From what I remember it is fairly easy to have a nicely laid out resume because Microsoft Word gives you the resume formation and you easily fill it out. The surprisingly difficult part about completing the resume is filling it out because you want to dress it up, to make your talents seem strong. I remember my W.P.C. teacher also mentioning that employers only look over your resume for a few seconds and that they sometimes judge you by the layout of your resume.

     My past working experience begins when I was 17 years old, I worked at a restaurant called Central Park Deli and Grill in which I was a cashier/server. I got the experience of closing out the register at the end of the day which consisted of making sure all of the transactions added up and depositing a check to the bank. I worked there from the middle of my Junior year in High School until about three months before I went to college. My next job was working for a staffing company called Liberty Staffing in which I would be sent out tot a job site five days a week to either help tear down a part of a building or sometimes help build a building. I gained a lot from this job, after just a few days my on the job manager allowed my to be in charge of some of the other workers because of my leadership skills and hard work. But the most important thing I learned on the job is that I never want to do that work again, we worked 7 am til 3 pm in the hot Florida sun. I remember all of my co-workers telling me to stay in school and make sure that I get a desk job. Them telling me that really hit me in the heart and gave me the motivation to keep pushing through school no matter how hard it gets.
   
     For writing my resume I need to learn how to exaggerated my accomplishments. "When you describe positions, functions or responsibilities, use the active voice ("supervised three workers") rather than the passive voice ("three workers were supervised by me").The active voice highlights action." - (Markel page 412). I am excited to learn how to do this because I believe using the active voice makes all the difference between getting the job.

Week 10 ENG 302 HW

This week in class we got an opportunity to meet with our group and get going on our Report and Proposal Project. Last week was spring break and like you could guess our group did not meet up or communicate during the break. The goal for the Wednesday after spring break was to have all of our primary and secondary research completed so we could start putting the report together. We all believe that once we had the research done that it would be easy to follow the example and put our document together. The issue we are running into is making everything flow just the way we want it. We don't want our document seeming scattered and all over the place. I feel as this is the biggest obstacle our team faces.

One thing I feel our team is confident about is our reasoning behind our proposal. "Technical communication, like any other kind of writing, calls for making persuasive claims and supporting them effectively. Some forms of evidence are so clear and obvious that you immediately understand the claim the writer is making." Our goal is for our proposal to be clear and make sense so that we can go through the reasoning and persuasive the audience into agreeing with our proposal.

I feel as I am starting to really understand the importance of this class, as I believe this is my last English class in college that there are so many rules and constraints that need to be followed in order to be effective in the business world. The book talks about being aware of other cultures and how you need to understand their perspectives. My father works with some employees from Asian and it is important for him to understand their values so he doesn't offend them and could possible ruin a business deal. I am glad to see that the book talks about this because I don't know of another class that would cover this material that is so vital to being successful.

With that being said I am excited to finish up this project and be one week closer to summer time.

     For our project we are researching the Humanities Research Institute here at Arizona State University. Our mission is to inform the public about the Institute. A big issue I found with the Humanities Research Institute was the lack of marketing. I have personally never seen a flyer, building or online advertisement about the Institute. Once I did a little research on using the Facebook page I realized they did not seem to have anything to show for. They had their Facebook pager for over 2 year and only have about 250 followers. On average they get about one like per post and very rarely does a post get shared. In this modern age everything is based around social media; instead of marketing using flyers and other physical forms much of the advertising in social media based. With that being said we plan to get the Humanities Research Institute a much more recognizable public image. We will do this by hanging out flyers, at the MU and mouth to mouth advertising about an upcoming event for the Institute, We will have a cookout for students and staff to help promote the Institute, attenders will participate in small games to win prizes, everyone who follows their Facebook page will get benefits things such as coupons etc... The price for this advertising will be around 4500 dollars for food, flyers, labor and other small cost. This promotion will bring the Humanities Research Institute a huge boost in followers and it will be important for the Institute to follow up with marketing events twice a year.