By Ben Yi, Grade 10
Recently, I went to go work for my parents again for another week and here are the 2 most important things I learned this time:
- If you need help, ask. This was the biggest lesson I learned. While working there, compared to the last 2 times I worked for my parents, I learned how to do a lot of things. Whether I didn’t know how to do something or just needed a hand, asking for help always saved me a ton of time as opposed to just trying to do everything myself. I used to feel like asking for help meant that I couldn’t handle things on my own but I’ve come to realize that other people working there have had much more experience than I have. One of the biggest things I struggled with was learning how to secure products to the pallets. I spent about 5 minutes trying to figure out how to do it by myself until someone noticed I was struggling and offered to teach me. Another time, we spent over 2 hours looking for a product until we made a simple phone call and then found it a few minutes later.. Not only did it save the company time, but it also meant that I could now use that time for other things. Whether it’s asking for help when you don’t understand how to do something or reaching out to ask if you need more time, always ask.
- Double check your work. While working there, around a quarter of my time was spent fixing mistakes that other people had made. If it was a scanning error, I would have to go back and find where the mistake happened; if it was that someone had misplaced something or counted something wrong, I would have to go find it. Double checking work made the process much faster and meant that errors would happen much less often.
