Yours truly’s first ever job

..is one that lasts three days, makes your legs all aching and wob­bly, throat all sore and dry, and freak­ing exhausted.

Seri­ously man. What a way to get expe­ri­ence for a (first) job.

The crowd

But despite all that, it was fun and a great expe­ri­ence need­less to say.

For the past three days, I had been work­ing at the 2008 PIKOM PC Fair at the Per­mata Carpark exhi­bi­tion hall that ran from 4-6th April. I was attached to PC Image, a name syn­ony­mous with PC fairs here in Kuch­ing. Seri­ously, if you’ve been to PC fairs in Kuch­ing, you’d know how PC Image dom­i­nates Kuching’s PC busi­ness scene.

This PC fair alone PC Image occu­pied over 30 booths scat­tered over two halls. And that’s eas­ily the largest space occu­pied by any PC shop in Kuching.

PC Image booth

Even cus­tomers get bored of see­ing that logo at every cor­ner. There’s one instance when a cus­tomer asked me what our shop is. On which I would proudly reply, ‘We’re PC Image, Wisma Saberkas, Sec-’ When they will inter­rupt, ‘Oh! Oh yes, sec­ond floor, I know! I bought my (insert PC periph­eral here) there!’

After which, they would not fail to add, ‘Wah, PC Image again ar? You guys are every­where lah.’

Mobile Gear booth

For three days, I was con­fined in this booth, try­ing to sell PC periph­er­als such as mice, key­boards, head­sets, ear­phones and wire­less mp3 players.

Its obvi­ously not my first time in a PC fair. I’m always a loyal PC fair goer, but never before I’ve been to one as a salesperson.

Well that’s the fun part. =)

What makes work­ing in a PC fair so inter­est­ing is that you meet all sorts of peo­ple. Its where you meet your Eng­lish lan­guage lec­turer and actu­ally get to speak Man­darin to him/her/it. Its where you get to tease our favourite cute teacher Ms. Chong into buy­ing a headset.

Its where you get to meet that hot chick work­ing at your favourite chicken rice stall you fre­quent. Its where you meet long lost pri­mary school friends. Its where you find out how true those gos­sips are about new cou­ples when you actu­ally get to see them walk­ing together.

Seri­ously man, its like your life story walk­ing past you. =D All in your cir­cle of friends con­verg­ing in one place.

Customer trying out headphones

And being a sales­per­son in a PC fair, a learnt a damn lot. I learnt that there are those who ask a ton of ques­tions about some­thing they’re inter­ested in, only to walk away empty handed. I learnt that there are peo­ple who just bla­tantly ignore you pro­mot­ing some­thing they’re look­ing at, only to talk to you when they actu­ally want to pur­chase something.

I learnt that there are those who just want their pri­vacy brows­ing through the dis­plays, with­out you bab­bling over how many aeons the war­ranty is valid for. I learnt that to turn a poten­tial cus­tomer into a poten­tial buyer, you must not let room for more than 20 sec­onds of silence.

In short, you just talk, talk, talk and talk.

But unfor­tu­nately, that is what I suck at. I am a total sucker in con­vinc­ing peo­ple. By breach­ing that 20 sec­ond silence bar­rier, you’re widen­ing the gap between you and your cus­tomer which dries up your customer’s ini­tial inter­est. That is how most of my cus­tomers end up — walk­ing away. =P

Baby mouses

But of course, over the course of three days, I man­aged to sharpen my ama­teur­ish pro­mot­ing skills to woo a few buy­ers. Such as buy­ers of these colour­ful mouses (mice?) you see above.

They come in five colours and were a huge hit among love­birds strolling the booths. You get the occa­sional cou­ple star­ing up in fas­ci­na­tion at them, with the girl usu­ally pestering/hinting heavily/ordering their other half for one.

Its that sat­is­fac­tion of see­ing the smiles on their faces when you enter­tain (read: pro­mote) them on which colours they should choose etc. More so the sat­is­fac­tion when you see them in delight when you hand them their newly pur­chased goods. =)

Packing up on the last day
Last day of PC fair — clear­ing up stock.

Its also amaz­ing to see the effort involved in organ­is­ing a sin­gle PC fair. Every time I visit a PC fair I’d just browse through every­thing with­out much thought. In real­ity, its a night­mare when it comes to stock man­age­ment. We’re talk­ing about mov­ing and trans­port­ing hun­dreds of boxes of stock and equip­ment here. Its mind bog­gling I tell you.

By the way, have you ever seen how the exhi­bi­tion hall looks like on the last day?

The fair aftermath
PC fair — the aftermath.

Looks as if The Hulk’s been through here. =)

Well of course, a huge part of the fun in work­ing in a PC fair is of course your col­leagues. Yeah, they may be fear­some com­peti­tors in woo­ing cus­tomers in the race to get com­mis­sions but most of the time they’re there as great buddies.

I can’t imag­ine work­ing in a PC fair with­out them. =P

Group photo

All under one booth. The guys from left, me, Dar­ren, Ah Yeong (our group leader) and Tim­o­thy. And the gals from left, Ah Ning and Wendy.

Gee, thanks guys. With­out you, I’d earn so much more! No, seri­ously. =P Wahaha.

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