1. Memo<br />To:-914400000Stephanie M. Anderson Quinn<br />From:Crystal Valdez<br />Date: 3/17/11<br />Subject:Interviews with Professionals <br />Introduction: I had to interview two employees that worked in the field of study that I would like to pursue, which is business. It was hard for me because the two professionals I interviewed were managers which means they were very busy so I was very intimidated by the little bit of time that they would be free for me so I can ask them a few questions. Once I finally got to interview them I was very pleased with the information I received. <br />I never knew being a manager for a grocery store could be so overwhelming. Even though my dream job doesn’t have anything to do with a grocery store setting, it has to do with maybe being a head manager one day in business. Which leads me talking about my two professional interviews; I asked Mr. Sommners and Mr. Slater various questions about their daily jobs at Krogers that could inform me about my work field in the future. I was very surprised of how many people they were responsible for on a daily bases. The co-manager I spoke to first was Mr. Slater who was only twenty-five years old; he was very nice and relaxed when it came to his job and also outside of the work environment which stood out to me the most. Mr. Slater was explaining to me about his education and background and I was very surprised that he never even attended college; he just graduated from high school and kind of fell into to the position. When Mr. Slater was in high school he was a regular employee at krogers before getting his title as a co-manager. After graduating high school I guess Mr. Slater knew all the right people from krogers because of his employment background already which lead him to being so successful in retail. Mr. Slater was very lucky to be able to fall into a position like that without a college education. He did explain to me that things are a little bit different now when it comes to employment, getting a high position job now would be a lot more difficult without a bachelor’s degree and is very rare. For Mr. Slater getting the job was easy but after the easy part there’s a hard part, which is maintaining the store eight hours a day six days a week. Being a manager comes with a lot of responsibilities that revolves around the store. The main responsibility is to deal with the customers and employees, making sure the customers are satisfied and assisted and the employees are all counted for. Then there comes in the store responsibilities which consist of looking over yesterday’s sales, customer counts, what is out of stock and also making sure the store is clean constantly. Also any problem that has to do with the store gets addressed to Mr. Slater and is expected to get resolved as soon as possible. When becoming a manager you have to be able to deal with all sorts of different personalities and attitudes. The average number of employees that work during one shift is about one hundred and thirty, and the average amount of customers a day is about thirty-five thousand. With that many people daily it can become a handful to deal with so Mr. Slater told me it’s a lot of dedication and responsibility to handle. So with Kroger operating more than 2,400 grocery stores, nearly 800 convenience stores and nearly 400 jewelry stores in 31 states they take their jobs very serious and with a lot of pride. After speaking with Mr. Slater I then talked to Mr. Sommners, who was much more on the older side and more strict. He also had a lot more experience than Mr. Slater and also was once in real-estate. Mr. Sommners was the head manager that was above Mr. Slater, so he had a little more responsibility. But what was different about Mr. Sommners was that he attended college and got a bachelor’s degree, so I thought that was kind of cool to have two people in the same profession but with totally different education backgrounds. But for the most part both managers had the same job but with different shifts and more power. After speaking to both managers I understood a lot more then when I had first walked in. I took everything into consideration when listening to what the managers had to say. I got to admit that it kind of scared me and made me think is this what I really want to do? But then I realized without hard work how can I really know and understand my limits and what I can accomplish if I’m always scared of the thought of failure? I feel like business matches my interest, values, and personality more than anything thing else I can think of. No matter where I end up at in business I know there’s nothing more I would love to do with my life then to have excitement, organization, and preparation and that’s what I feel business is all about. <br /> <br />