Here you go, a different theme from the placement diary! I guess some of you might find out the placement diary to be a little bit boring since it is quite unrelated based on the industry that I am in. (I have tried to make it fun and exciting lol don’t break my heart) Additionally, you might be curious of how a professional environment is like compare to the uni life, so here is the brand new series that I am bringing to you guys – workplace culture! Well, it is not actually a proper culture that I will cover in this series of articles, just some interesting stuff or things I have observed in general outside the job. I have some other friends work in different fields as well so it is a very mixed or should I say casual article that you can read just to get an insight of everything in the workplace. Now if you are ready, scroll you mouse ladies and gents.
First article of the series, I just really have to touch on the topic of British people and their tea. Very stereotype but it is 100% true based on where I am and all the other story I have heard from my friends! First thing you will being asked when you bump into a meeting or just literally anywhere, “do you need any coffee or tea?”. Well, it is still common is Taiwan or wherever in the world I supposed, but they are not just saying with their tea/coffee! On my first day of work, I got offered to join a “Coffee Club” in the PE department. It’s been called a club, but it is actually just a bunch of people gather around to get some filter coffee from a big pot. I have to say having a coffee break with other colleges that I have met on the first day did ease my nerve of getting into a professional world! What we do while waiting for the coffee to drip through the filter is just chatting about literally anything. Either having a casual chat about each other’s weekends or just some daily updates related to the job, it has slowly become like an informal team gather and catch up within the department. The funniest thing about coffee club is the regular time of filtering the coffee, we do it at 9am and 3pm everyday when is the time when everyone was just about the drown throughout the day. Since we are quite a large group of 6-7 people that are always gather around one table with our coffee pot at almost the same time every day, the others in the company start to call us “Coffee Club”. I personally really enjoy this kind of chilled break and this is another way of getting close with the colleges at the same time!
Hence coffee club is only within the PE department, everything gets quite funny since I have recently starting my trial in pre-sales department. In pre-sales, they have got a coffee capsule machine that they made their coffee from. The other thing is the funny relationship between pre-sales and PE since PE always have to change stuff from the pre-sales’ design and PE always think pre-sales got the chances to see some fancy new products and limited their technical decision on replacing the kits. People from both departments always making jokes on each other, but obviously in a good way just like close friends lol. Therefore, on the day that I start in pre-sales while they are trying to offer me the coffee, they were be like “Oh, you are in the Coffee Club!”. It is always funny to see how they make fun of each other. Guess which one I am with now, both haha.
Apart from the “coffee fight” (jk), the amount of tea I am drinking is ridiculous (not for the British I am pretty sure). Every 2 hours, what my colleges and manager asked was “Shall we get some tea?” not even joking, every 2 hours. Sometimes I will just wondering, even in Taiwan as a bubble tea addict, I wouldn’t have tea that often. Back in uni, I always have to had at least a cup of coffee everyday while having my meal, but now I am not even bothered. I am drink 2 cups of coffee and at least 2 cups of tea all together in one day. Even for my other friends working in other fields, everyone does the same thing. Well it does saves me from buying milks since I don’t even want to dink anything else apart from water after work. Currently in my second months of placement, hopefully I won’t turned into a tea/coffee addict after I finished haha!
Drinking coffee and tea is definitely the best way of making connections and socialising with your college and this is also the first thing I found out in the professional work environment. Don’t know if you have enjoyed this article or not, but I will try to bring some similar contents as I discovered something. I will see you guys very soon in the workplace culture series, now let me just get a cup of tea!
Mandy xx
