Post 4: Communication is Key

Art of Disney - The upscale art store that is part of Park Arrivals

I'm getting trained here next week!

My location includes six different stores so communication is an extremely crucial aspect to making sure everything runs smoothly. The Park Arrivals merchandise team achieves this by having coordinators during every shift. The highest position in our location is a leader, after the leaders come the coordinators. The coordinators manage all of the scheduling and are around to help us if there are any issues during our shifts. These issues could range from needing to contact the floor stocker to someone not showing up for their shift. The coordinators all have cell phones so we can easily contact them through an extension using the phone at our location. Through this, communication is easily achieved and successful. An aspect of communication where my work place could improve is in clearly stating expectations, especially when I first started. A lot of my experiences in the work place have been through trial and error, especially when understanding how the system that gives me my assignment works. Nobody every explained it to me and the first time I was on my own, I honestly did not know what I was supposed to be or where I was supposed to be. Now I have figured everything out and it is not an issue, but it would have been a lot better if I had known what I needed to do from the beginning.

As guests exit the park there are cast members who are facilitating surveys about their experiences. The best review we can get is 100 percent excellence. They have recently started posting the percentage of excellence in our work locations so we can see how we are doing. Recently it has been in the seventies. Most of this “excellence” derives from the customer service we provide our guests with. Therefore, the best way that I can be involved in my company’s success next week is by providing the best version of guest service that I can. My goal next week is to be very interactive with the guests and provide them with everything they need and more. This past week I got to start this a little by giving a family a photo album. They were a Make A Wish family because their son was ill and when they didn’t have enough cash to purchase the album I gave it to them. They were extremely appreciative and made me feel so great.

HOH or Heart of House stocks the stock rooms

The most recent difficulties I encountered was when I worked a stocking shift, which is called Heart of House or HOH for short. This shift was on my schedule and I figured it was just in my normal location, so I just went there and started unloading boxes. Soon I realized this was not the case and I had to go unload multiple pallets at four different stores across the park. This was frustrating because nobody told me how this worked, where I was supposed to meet everyone for my shift, or even what uniform I was supposed to wear. Despite this and the fact that I was wearing the wrong outfit, I gave this shift my all and put in very hard work. I ended up being told by the coordinator that I did a great job and that if I ever wanted to work HOH again to just let her know. Today I worked another HOH shift and I had multiple people tell me they heard I was a hard worker, which made me feel really good.

Note To Know:

Hard work does not go unnoticed! Even if someone does not verbalize their appreciation they will notice and take note that you are giving it your all. At the very least, you know you did your best and that your representing yourself in the best way, and you will feel great because of this!