My first guided tour! in Hello.

The job is still going great. It’s really easy compared to my old one. All the stock is kept in cupboards on the shop floor, so it’s really quick and easy to replenish everything. They have cleaners who literally spend all day cleaning the shop, the bistro and the tour, just going round and round, so there’s no cleaning to do. When there’s no customers in, it’s ok for us to stand and talk, or even go on our phones. (I don’t do that yet, haha!) Everyone is dead nice, really easy to talk to.
I kind of got thrown in at the deep end with my first tour. My manager, Brian, had asked me if I felt confident enough to give a tour on my next shift and I said I thought I did. Only when I got home, I realised my next shift was on Saturday, the busiest day of the week. The tours run every half hour, meaning there’s really tight time restrictions to avoid clashes. So on Friday night I decided that maybe Saturday wasn’t the best day to start.
I very nearly left the house without my script, but was glad I took it because I was rotaed to do two talks, one at 10am and one at 4! I asked if someone would swap with me for the 10am one and somebody did, but no one showed for it anyway. I still hadn’t made my own bullet points by this stage, so most of the day was spent doing that, in between serving and giving tastings. So obviously the day flew by really quickly because I was dreading 4 coming round!
I explained to my group I was new, to please be kind, and they were. There was a couple of brief moments when I had a moment of clarity and thought “shit, I’m actually doing this!” but then that went and I was ok again. I did get asked a couple of questions I couldn’t answer, and they were happy to wait until the end and I could ask someone a bit more knowledgeable. There’s a point towards the end of the tour where I have to go into the shop to get a key for the warehouse, and all the staff were grinning at me and giving me thumbs ups, so that made me happy! I managed to time it to perfection, I had them all back in an hour to do their tastings, and I got a round of applause! So I feel a wee bit more confident now about doing it again.
A couple of bits bugged me, but weren’t my fault. There’s a stage where we show them a short film, then allow people to look at the boards around the room. Only they just stood there and looked at me instead. So I had to tell them again they could look at the boards. I don’t know why they didn’t, I’m sure I made it clear enough. Also when I took them into the distillery itself, production had finished for the day, so the mash tun and both the stills were empty and switched off, which is the part of the tour that makes it interesting. I’m keeping my eyes on TripAdvisor, just in case, haha! (Not that I’m bothered, these things are out of my control.)

Last updated June 17, 2019