Stock Assistant Review

For the most part I liked the work placement, although it was very hard work at times. There were a few less enjoyable aspects such as the very long shifts that could be somewhat physical at times which was very tiring and sometimes you could be working on your own for quite a long period of time.

I think most of the colleagues were quite appreciative of the work I was doing. However there were a few that perhaps were not that responsive, which made it a little harder at times. Obviously when you are new there can be lots of things you do not know and I think a bit more understanding would have been nice from some of the much more experience people.

I think to begin with there was quite I lot of support and guidance given by the management team, however I did feel after the 1st week that there could have been a bit more support as I was still very new and did not really know exactly what I should be doing.

I was generally very busy on a daily basis, which was good in some ways as this kept it interesting and meant there was a lot to do. However, there were times where this felt a bit too much and a bit too intense and therefore I this a better balance of busy to being able to breathe would have been preferable.

I was not given that much responsibility during my placement, although I did have a lot of tasks that I needed to carry out myself, without assistance and so I suppose that I did have a degree of autonomy within this, but not with jobs that I would class as high responsibility.

I did not really feel that the skills that I learnt here would be particularly helpful for me in the future. The customer service skills will obviously be useful, but quite i lot of the things I learnt were very company specific and therefore not so applicable to other roles that I might do in the future.

The atmosphere was okay in the store. I think that there were times were it felt a bit negative- people were tired because of the long shifts and so there did not have that much motivation to carry out the tasks because there was not any particularly incentive for them to finish what they were doing.

I think that the work placement could have been more organised. At the start it seemed well organised, but then the management seemed to forget that I was doing a work placement as opposed to an employee that had been there for a long time and so I feel the organisation was lacking after the first week.

I do not think that the company invested that much in my personal training and development beyond the 1st week. I feel that there was a potential to be taught quite a bit and gain lots of different experiences in the company, however this opportunity was not given and therefore I feel this was a weak aspect.

To me the future employment prospects with ASDA are not that appealing at all. I think that the work was not suited to what I want to do in the future and not what I could see myself doing for many years and making a career out of and therefore not appealing to me personally.

I think that among some of the employees there was a desire for a social scene. There was only one other person I was aware of doing a work placement and there were friendly and we did meet up outside of work a few times, but there was not a specific company social scene.

The cost of living and socialising was what I expected for the area and seemed okay to me. I think because the people that I was socialising with were in similar financial situations and therefore we were able to choose the affordable things for everyone as opposed to the more expensive places.

Personally I did not really experience too much of the nightlife, but I think the general evening atmosphere in the area was pleasant and I am sure there were plenty of nightlife things to do if that was what you wanted. I did try out some of the bars though and they were very good atmosphere.

There were not many work organised activities that you could get involved in outside of work. But there was lots of different things you could do in the area independent of work and therefore I was more than happy with this, so it did not really matter that work did not have anything organised.