Culminating blog reflection

My Topic was on Business Management and volunteering at Uptown Market was a great experience. I got a chance to feel what its like to run a small market, going through the same pressure and problems my mentor faces and I learned how to over come them. Communication was very important because every time I counted inventory I had to inform my mentor and tell him the products we sell the most and the products that are not so popular. In the beginning I struggled with what merchandise we should buy or not, there was a couple of times I didn't know if we were gonna sell enough of one specific product so I felt stuck in the middle trying to figure out if we should buy it or not. As time went on I learned how to make better educated guesses so I knew what days we would sell a lot and what days it would be slow. For example, on the weekends I know a lot of people come into the store looking for cigarettes so the best thing to do is to stock up our cigarette shelve. After this point of dealing with inventory I'm more careful with the choices I make. Working together and being open minded was also very important because he would constantly give me tips and correct me here and there. If i had ideas, he would also take them into consideration. Being able to get a taste of ownership made me be more aware of my surroundings, if I was ever to own my business in the future I would know to keep myself safe as well as my employees. A major challenge I encountered was overcoming my shyness, being at the store you have to talk to people you don't know and i've never been comfortable with that especially with the type of people that would go into the store but as I spent more time there I was able to over come my shyness and talk to customers as well as dealing with the rude ones and being more patient. My social and time management skills improved, I prioritized my time much better now. I learned what time I should leave my house to go to the market or when I should leave to work because now I am very familiar with the time that traffic starts. As for my social skills I learned how to talk to people and communicate better as well as being more confident when I speak in general. I learned that in this business confidence in how you speak is very crucial to convincing people to purchase products and so people are aware that you know what you are talking about. Dealing with the rude/crazy customers that go into the market made me realize once you know how to control the situation and talk to them you could learn how to talk to anybody. This whole experience made me realize this is not the path for me due to the fact that I do not like to work under pressure or ever own a small super market. Now that I got the chance to figure out this wasn't something I wanted to get into, I could move on to my second option which is accounting and experience something new.