Brief Working Diary

It's been very tiring these last few days as I have been working as a promoter for the Popular book fair held at the hall of Yuk Choy primary school. The fair will be held from 29/05 til 07/06. Here is the small glimpse of my working life...

27/05
Was told to go to the Popular outlet at JJ for briefing. What I assume to be a short briefing turned out to be a training of sort. Roughly told us what we should expect to do during the book fair. Learned how to maneuver the handjet, those small machines used to move palettes around. Lasted almost 2 hours. Can went on training but don't feel like wasting time learning how to sort out books after years as a librarian.

28/05
Today's the day I became kuli (labor) for the first time. All of us were there to do those heavy liftings and assembling shelves and tables and displaying books on it. It was hard work. Those boxes of books weighted a lot and it's not just one or two boxes you moved but like around 5 per hour. When I reached back home around 10pm+ (I reached before 10am), all my body was aching. I can even felt the cells on my fingertips vibrating violently. Money ain't that easy to earn...

29/05
The fair officially opened. It was quite crowded for a weekday. Maybe it's the big, bold 90% sign on the banner that captivated people's attention. My secondary job was to serve customers, answered enquiries and unloading books for sales. My main job was to scoop up some nice and cheap books for my friends and myself. It's like heaven for us book-lovers. There were tons of books on discounts, with some as dirt cheap as 10 cent per book. On the first day, my focus was given to the customers, leaving me not enough time to look for books for myself. Reached home all with bruises on my fingers and arms due to the liftings and shelving books with old wounds still recuperating...

30/05
There were events held on the day but it's catered to the Chinese as the medium of all the talks and programmes were conducted in Mandarin. Luckily I had some friends working together. If not, it'll be boredom that killed me, not tiredness. Besides, I met some new friends. There were quite a few of the promoters and cashiers were from my high schools but I just knew two. Some I knew were from St. Michaels but I don't know them. Some I didn't even knew were Michaelians. Quite a few were from USM and at least five of them stayed at Bercham, the same area as me. One even were my aunt's ex-neighbour's daughter whose her brother was also Michaelian, same age as me. What a coincidence (or not). Scooped up few cheap books for myself such as Alexander McCall Smith's books and some arthitecture books which my friend had asked me to look for.

31/05
It's normal for us workers to be there everyday throughout the fair as we were, well, workers. But I saw some of the customers who had came for the second or third time. One lady and her friend had been here for more than four or five time and it was only the third day of the fair. I always tried my best to help them searched for their books but it's very hard as all the books on discount were all mixed up. It's not our faults not to sort it genres by genres but since it came unsorted, why bother? There's one Punjabi customer who complaint that the MC used Mandarin when introducing today's event. He kept saying we should use a language that all can understand like Malays or English. Well, tell that to the Area Manager yourself. Scooped up The Reluncant Fundamentalist, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2006 I think.

01/06
Saw that lady again. She was here trying to grab some cheap children's books for her children. Again, I helped her as much as I could what with the mess that were the books. You can't believe how uneducated some customers can be. Those on discount books were stacked together, spined up. Every night, we tried to clear up the mess so that they, the customers, could easily look through the books. When the books started to pile up, we would spined it back. There were few customers standing near the table which I'm arranging, grabbed a book, glanced it, cincai tossed it back, grabbed another one, looked it up, tossed it back if not interested; the cycle repeating itself while I was there trying to make it looked nicer. Waste my effort only.


02/06
Getting boring with every single passing day. Nothing much happened except my box (yea, I had kept a box of books to be purchased at the end of the fair) was almost full. Gosh, it felt like what I earned from this job, I had to give back around 1/5 of the salary back to them. Must control myself before I gives back all of my salary back to Popular.

My box...

03/06
Time moved especially slow today. Every minutes passed felt like a heavy load of stuff being dragged by a person without any help. That lady was here again. She was like a daily occurance at the book fair. Found out that she taught in UTAR. Computer and accounting if I remembered correctly. Her total spending, so far, had exceeded RM600. Yes, tomorrow's my off day!

to be continued...