Quality Technician
Marks and Spencer

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I’m Ewan.

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I’m a quality technician at Marks and Spencer’s

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distribution centre in Castle Donington.

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We deal with outbound, dispatching,

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checking to make sure that things have

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been packed correctly, making sure that

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customers will be happy with their orders.

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It can be website-based issues as well.

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But there’s also a side

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that’s more colleague-facing.

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So I have to go out and do

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what’s known as a process audit.

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So we have a check board of criteria

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that colleagues are trained off, and we go

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down and make sure they’re following that.

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Of course, people skills are a giant part of this job,

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both in just being welcoming and friendly,

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whatever you’re discussing,

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but also on the level of being able to

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but also on the level of being able to

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confront people where necessary.

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So there is like a basic level of IT to our work.

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It’s things that you can pick up quickly,

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but coming in with a little

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bit of knowledge is always beneficial.

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It was a mixed bag at school for me.

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I didn’t dislike school.

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I wasn’t someone that hated going to school,

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but I just had my ups and downs.

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None of my subjects really actually

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necessarily led to where I’m at.

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I mean, I was an arts person.

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I was doing drama, I was doing music.

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For this sort of thing, we do

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deal with, as I say, data sets.

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numbers and percentages and stuff.

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So being able to do very quick,

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figures and figure out percentages and

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splits and stuff is always very useful.

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I did okay at GCSEs, minus my maths,

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but you could take a resit alongside.

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But I got just… I got enough to get onto

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the college course I was doing which

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was actually video game development.

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Though I then did only a year

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of the video game development course,

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I just kind of decided it

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was not gonna be for me for the second year.

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And so, I went into just doing a work skills course

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and then just went straight into work.

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I went to Bombardier actually

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to do electrical engineering on trains.

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But there were certain things I

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just wasn’t getting on with on-site.

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I left and I started as an agency worker

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here as a trailer tipper.

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I was unloading stock sent

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from suppliers onto site.

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So I started there, slowly moved around the warehouse,

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doing packing, working a little

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bit on the outbound dispatching side of things.

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I went into parcel checking after

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a year of… no, two years of that.

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And then from the parcel checking team, I

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moved up now to where I am two years ago.

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My dad was a big push for me.

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After all of the college stuff, I was obviously

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quite all over the place with where I was going

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and he just said, “Get a job and

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use that as a springboard to go further.

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Once you have a job, you’ll be able to get

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other ones easier, not just because it looks

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good to have a job but because you’ll want to

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have a job, because you have money, you have

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a little bit of freedom, you have a schedule.

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You’ll get used to that sort of thing.”

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And so he kind of really pushed me on that front.