My Experience Working at The Imaginarium
Today is my last day doing work experience at The Imaginarium and I’m very sad to be leaving because I have had a great time and learnt so much! Robyn and Jayde have been very welcoming and it was so interesting to see all the work that goes into running a bookshop. Over my two weeks here, I have done so many different things and learnt a lot about stock management and how to serve customers as well as how to create content for The Imaginarium’s social media accounts. On my first day, I was mostly learning how to use the credit card machine and how the stock is managed, this involved unpacking a book order and serving my first customers!
I really enjoyed helping to redo the window and table displays, as well as re-writing the signs for each different book genre because it allowed me to be creative and I had lots of fun deciding which pictures to draw for each genre. I have also done a few social media and blog posts whilst I was here, which has definitely taught me about how The Imaginarium advertises itself through social media. Yesterday I made a transitions TikTok, which turned out to be a lot harder than it looks, but eventually I worked it out (mostly)! I have met so many lovely people whilst working here and I’ve also learnt more about lots of different books and genres -and found a lot of books that I’d like to read. At the end of last week, I dusted some of the shelves and wrote some book reviews for the blog page and this week I have done quite a few social media posts.
One of the things that I found hardest when working here was trying to remember the titles of the books people buy so we can reorder them and I would say that the day is longer than I’m used to but it has been really nice not having to wake up so early and having no homework to do when I get home. Overall I’ve had a great time and I would definitely recommend doing work experience at The Imaginarium because the staff are lovely, and I have learnt so much. I also think I’ve grown in confidence because I started doing things out of my comfort zone, such as phoning customers. The two weeks have gone very quickly but I have definitely learnt a lot about what is actually involved in running a bookshop, which is interesting when I compare it to what I thought I would be doing before coming to The Imaginarium.
Originally, I did not expect to do so much social media and I honestly didn’t think that there would be so many things to do in a small bookshop, but luckily there are! I also think that I was not expecting to have so many people coming in to order books or search for very specific books, but I think it’s great that people do this. Finally, this experience has really reinforced the idea of why it’s so great to shop locally and support independent businesses to me and it has definitely inspired me for the future. Thank you so much for having me The Imaginarium, I will miss working here!