
After I graduated from high school I went to college for a year and it wasn’t for me. I do want to go back but only when I feel I’m ready and I feel like working stably for years has helped me grow a lot. After college I started working almost immediately at Publix and then shortly after I got hired at American Eagle as well. Working both jobs helped me understand work load management and toughened me up to longer days when I was younger which has helped me tremendously now. I first started in customer service at Publix and it taught me a lot, from how to treat customers properly and to always leave them smiling all the way to money compliance and money services on top of everything the customer service staff job entailed. I had an unfortunate experience in customer service which forced me to make the personal decision to switch to produce rather than quitting, which has been an amazing experience. The amount that I have been able to learn at Publix, in my opinion, has laid the ground work for me to have the tools to be comfortable in almost any working environment.
As the produce clerk with the most experience I had a lot of extra responsibilities on top of the regular duties the job required, for example:
-Maintained the quality of produce by ensuring temperature sensitive items made it into their proper storage areas in a timely manner.
-Stocking the shelves quickly while also paying close attention to the detail of my work.
-Graded the produce regularly while I worked or before the store opened to ensure the freshest product stayed out on the shelves.
-Organized and broke down the truck every morning, I mostly opened and that’s when we would get our trucks.
-Restock displays with sale items every morning and make them look presentable.
Some of my other duties outside of my job description included:
-Managing the inventory counts in our system, whether it be scheduled or random.
-Reviewing and finalizing the order for our produce trucks which come in daily, including different trucks for different supplies.
-Reviewing and closing counts and bills for the trucks we received for that day and removing items if necessary.
I’m my position here I mostly worked in the back room and helped receive the shipments of clothes but it was an entry level position at the time, so it mostly consisted of tagging clothes, and managing the inventory while also maintaining and organized work environment.