Due to this pandemic, I never imagined myself to be in a situation where I will be doing jobs which have never crossed my mind. One is being a seller. Not just your ordinary seller but to be a vendor in a public market.
I still have my regular job in a work from home (WFH) setup. During idle time or weekends I will be in the public market selling fresh chicken, longganisa, balony, frozen meat products, hotdogs, chicken nuggets and other processed meat.
At the start, I am totally clueless on how to deal with the costumers. I am zero knowledge in engaging with costumers and it was always me being the customer buying the food items to these vendors.
Now the role has been swapped, I am the one selling and making sure the customer is satisfied with the products that I sell. This sudden role is a mind opener for me. It has given me another perspective and broaden my horizon.
Before, I used to think that selling in a public market is an easy job but that totally backfired to me. This job is not an easy one. You have to wake up early in the morning, like 3AM you have to be up already. This is a daily routine so imagine how long you can get used to this. Supplies arrive early in the morning so we need to be there too choose the best goods and avoid not making it to get our products to sell.
For the fresh chicken, we go to the slaughter house and place our order of fresh chicken to be sold in the market. Sometimes, supplies are very limited so there are times when we didn't get any chicken to sell. Sad news indeed since we woke up early for nothing. But we need to keep moving and find alternatives to sell in the market. Our next stop is the wholesaler of frozen and processed meat products. We select the all time favorites like hotdogs, longganisa, corned beef, tocino and etc. These are good items to sell since most moms cook them for breakfast and lunch of their kids.
After getting our supplies, we go to our stall and start setting up the store. We clean first before putting our items for sale. Lights on and we are ready for business. The selling starts at 5AM and ends at lunch time. Then resume for business at 2:30PM until 6PM. There are restrictions at the moment so time is only limited for us. We need to make the most of it while customers are still coming to hit our target sales for the day.
Most of the time, we barely make it with our sales. So the leftover products are keep in the freezer to be sold on the following day. For the goods which are not pleasing anymore in the eyes of customers, we keep them for our consumption. They are still edible but we prefer to consume them personally to avoid any problem with our customers. The goods are not yet spoil or rotten.
The best thing I guess in being a vendor in public market is you meet different kinds of people and adds value in their lives. You help them by satisfying their needs and you get a complimentary sometimes when they are satisfied with your service.