29.4.

Hi,

Today I went to Baystreet. I started by patrolling, and today they let me do the patrols on my own. On every patrol I checked the hotel floors and shopping centre floors, and looked out for the same things as I’ve explained before. I did in total four patrols along the day.

Some more excitement for the day brought the non-working parking system barrier and the traffic in the road next to the parking area. The barrier of the incoming traffic was broken, and despite the efforts to fix it, was still broken when I left. Due that, we had to in the morning write the parking tickets for the incoming cars. Later on the ticket machine at least started working, but after that we had to keep an eye on that people coming in actually took the ticket. If we didn’t keep an eye on them, they didn’t and then came to complain, when they tried to leave, that they couldn’t get out (because you have to have a paid ticket to get out). The human race never fails to surprise me…

In the 0 level’s corridor is a scaffolding, and today the construction workers came there with a pick-up car to pick up (See what I did there?) some scaffolding materials that were stored under that. I went there to check that others than the workers walked under the scaffolding and let them work in peace. (Clear explanation is clear…) So I guess I did some kind of work safety supervision.

But to be honest, I mostly stood on the bridge and told people whether or not there’s space in the parking area, that including going around the parking area and counting parking spaces.  

-Mirja

28.4.

Hejsan alla,

I worked in the office doing the same as usual: Updating database. I had a pile of uniform papers, whether given or returned, and I started with their updates. I also had some completely new employees to put on the database and some email addresses and bank account numbers.

After updating the papers, I of course had to file them somewhere: red files, past employee files or some other specific file for that paper. I was glad that there were only a few papers to be filed in the past employee files and even they were found quickly. I enjoyed working today, somehow the work just felt easy, I knew what I was doing and I had something to do for the whole day.

A huge bonus for today was that I got my private guard course certificate (and only failed one question on the test)!

-Mirja

25.-27.4.

Hi,

25.4.

On Monday I went to Baystreet. The day was really quiet and I had really few things to do. In the morning I went to patrolling with one guard. With this pair we first went through the hotel floors (I don’t know whether or not I mentioned Baystreet is a shopping centre for four floors and a hotel for a few more, but I'm doing it now) and then the shopping centre floors. In the hotel floors we checked the reception, the room corridors (if there’s mess, if people are okay, if there’s people who aren’t supposed to be there…) and the fire escape doors and corridors.

On the shopping centre floors we checked the same things as I’ve explained before and we also checked the fire escape corridors, where I haven’t been before. We also closed a few more fire doors than we opened.

For the rest of the day I did parking area watching, mostly on the outside car park, only a little time on the bridge. The day was super windy, so sitting next to the construction for hours eventually made my dark blue uniform white…

26.4.

On Tuesday we attended the private guard course. We started with the basic things: how should a guard dress in duty, how should they’re uniforms be (clean), why do people want to buy guarding, how should a guard behave on duty, why is good customer service an important thing...

We also went through access control, register keeping (vehicles, visitors, keys), why it’s important to take notes, what is confidentiality. We also got to know some examples about the practical work I hadn’t heard before, which was nice. We had two teachers keeping the course, which gave different perspectives. At the end of the day we were given note papers to study for the exam on the next day.

27.4.

We continued with the private guard course. We went through work place safety and how it affects security work and did a revision of things we’ve handled on the course. The revision part is also the private guard refreshment course, so on that part we had other participants, who already have the private guard course gone through. In Malta, if you want to keep your security license, you need to attend a refreshment course once a year. In the end of the day we had the exam, which was probably one if the easiest tests I’ve ever taken.

Overall, the course might be useful for someone who doesn’t know anything about security. But if one has studied even the Finnish 40 hour private guard course, this course will be boring. The look on Maltese law considering security work was really brief, and we concentrated too much on irrelevant trivia which was explained understandably in other documents (for example applying for private guard license). Some of the teachers also didn’t bother including non-Maltese-speakers to the conversations that much, even if we made up half of the students and asked to be spoken in English more.

Most of the teachers were nice enough though, and especially the one who kept us the last lesson really made the effort to make everyone understand what he was saying and gave us good, well told examples from the real working world. I also enjoyed getting to know the words that are used when speaking of security work (access control, key register etc) and the brief package of Maltese law text we were given (in English though). I also learnt a new word in Maltese : Kontroll tal-Access!

-Mirja

21.-22.4.

Hello there,

On both days I worked in Baystreet. I did mostly parking area watching and patrolling. As an add to parking area watching from before, the outside parking area was now open for customers too. Therefor I had to check parking tickets (that they took one when arriving and showed that they had paid before leaving).

On patrolling there wasn’t anything new. We reported in the morning which shops had opened at what time, that there wasn’t anything broken or people sleeping or causing trouble. I also did a bit of camera surveillance when I happened to sit in the office.

On Thursday I got to do some cool stuff: me and the real guard who I was paired with secured a hotel receptionist when she transferred money to the upper hotel floors. It took about two minutes but oh god, did I feel professional.

On the same day I also got to put an escalator on, for it had stopped moving. I also let a person from a shop have her brake and went to replace her for a few minutes. On her break I mostly just checked that no one touched the register or broke anything, because the place was a gaming room, so there wasn’t really anything to steal.

I enjoyed the working days pretty much and I’ll go back next week. What I could do more, is to be more active and ask more about the security work there.But I’ve done what I’ve been told and been flexible about the tasks.  

-Mirja

19.-20.4.

Hi,

19.4.

I spent the day in the office. I continued filing with the same past employee files, with different papers though. I don’t know what papers they exactly were, because that fact didn’t matter the slightest with my job. They might have been some final payment papers and written resignations. But as said, all that matters to me is the name on the paper, not really what it’s about.

The task wasn’t as frustrating as before. I actually finally found all of the papers matching with some file.

20.4.

I went back to Baystreet. I really like that workplace. All the other people who work there are nice. Today I mostly did camera and parking area surveillance in the office. There are somewhat eighty cameras in the mall and that’s a lot more than I’ve used to. I watched the cameras and would had reported if there had been anything out of ordinary, but there wasn’t. I also wathced the parking area (how many vehicles there are, is there any parking space) with the help of a parking area surveillance programme on the computer. At the end of the day I did a quick patrol around the mall.

The tasks weren’t that demanding, but I liked them nonetheless. At least others trusted me that much to leave me in the office unattended. 

-Mirja

18.4.

Hey,

Today we went to Baystreet. It was like a different world compared to Point. There were four guards on the day shift and they were actually interested to show us what to do. We were told what they wanted us to do, we were showed around properly and we were given things to do. I had a purpose!

Baystreet isn’t actually bigger than Point, but it is right next to Paceville, the night club hell, and there are a lot more customers (and oh so little parking space). First we were shown around and went patrolling with other guard. The first difference comes here: He told us what things to look when patrolling, which we weren’t told in Point.

For the rest of the day we mostly did parking space watching, either inside the center or in the outside. The inside parking area is small and the sign which announces whether the parking area is full or not, is very poorly lightened. So we stood on the entrance of the parking area and when a car tried to come in, we told the driver if the area was full or not. The outside parking area was closed for everyone except for builders’ cars. There is a massive renovation going on in the Baystreet, half of the building is covered in scaffolding. So in the outside parking area we just asked people who tried to drive there if they were builders. If not, we asked them to park elsewhere. We also did patrolling around the day.

The day flew past and Baystreet was a pleasant working environment. This was one of the rare days I felt like we were given something real to do, something that would need to be done even if we weren’t there. We worked in pairs, so that both of us worked with one of the guards who have been there for longer. The people who worked there were very nice and friendly. I really want to go there again.

-Mirja

16.-17.4.

Hi there,

I haven’t really blogged about previous weekends, mostly ue to the fact that I haven’t done anything (besides eating and wasting my life on YouTube). But this weekend I actually did something.

On Saturday we decided to visit Lavinia and Jovan on their soon-to-be house in Gozo. We left our apartment at 12 and took a bs to Ic-Cirkewwa. From there we took a ferry to Gozo and in Gozo another bus to Ggantija. Long story short, we had a little misunderstanding with Lavinia and ended up in the wrong village. In the end, wiht the help of few friendly locals, we got to the right place. It was nice to visit their house, and Gozo overall. We’ll probably go visit them again the next weekend. Gozo is a beautiful island, and a lot more quiet than Malta.

On Sunday we went to Sliema, to have a better look at the place. We had a pleasant walk on the coast road. 

-Mirja

15.4.

'Ello,

Today we worked together and finished filing the returned uniform papers into the past employee files. Or finished and finished, we didn’t find all the files to match the papers, so on some day we will go through them together with Lavinia.

After those we started filing some final payment papers to the same past employee files. So the whole day was going through alphabets and sticking papers together.  It was frustrating but somehow got less frustrating at the end. We will continue doing those next week.

On Monday we’ll go to a new location, Baystreet. Lavinia told that it would be a bit busier than The Point (hopefully that’s true). She also asked us to give more feedback of our work (whether we like it or not, what we’d like to do etc) and I’ll try to do that.

It feels funny that we’ve been here almost a month now and we’ve still got more than a month to go. I’m facing a bit of a midway crisis here, meaning that everything is kinda boring and I’d really like to be back at my workplace in Finland, where I know what to do and when and why. But I’m sure that this will pass (I face this every time I do anything for more than two hours) and at the end it’ll be hard to leave. But I’ve got myself together with riding this blog, so yay. 

-Mirja

14.4.

Hello,

Today I continued what Henna started yesterday, which was going through ”Returned uniforms” file and attaching those documents to the past employee files. Practically this meant going through past employee archives over and over again, trying to find the matching name and ID number on uniform paper and past employee papers. This took pretty much the whole day and we’ll continue tomorrow.

When I first came in in the morning, I was told that I hadn’t updated the mooring men and terminated employees files properly, considering their contract/termination dates (meaning that the dates weren’t updated in the database). I take responsibility for the mooring men dates (3/8 dates missing) but the terminated employees I however did update, check and save. 

-Mirja

11.-13.4.

Hi,

11.4.

I worked at the office whilst Henna went to work on The Point. In the office I updated the database based on some new employee papers and some termination papers. After updating I filed the papers in red files (new employees) and past employee binders. I also put some time sheets into alphabetical order.

12.4.

In the morning Henna and I went to the office to attend a course about leadership. It lasted for two hours. It was somewhat useful because on that course someone put things I’ve thought about into a form of words and something understandable. Some parts were a bit scifi, because I’ve never done personnel or company management myself.

After the course we went to work on The Point. So we patrolled for three hours, occasionally telling some customer where the toilets are when they asked. I do get the general idea of guarding in stores, sure. But what’s the point of having three guards in one location and two of them don’t even know what they’re supposed to do if something happens or where they are allowed to work.

13.4.

I went to work on The Point and Henna went to the office. So I walked patrolled in four different levels for five hours, kept an eye on customers to prevent them from stealing (they didn’t), filled a box for some liquor competition papers if it went empty, told where the toilets were if I was asked and got the information of where to get a refund for toy machines if they failed to fulfill their duty, because one customer asked that. 

-Mirja

8.4.

Hi,

On Friday we went to work on The Point, a shopping mall in Tas-Sliema. We arrived there around nine and left around two. We met the actual guard who works there, Joseph Micallef and he showed us around and told us what we usually does at nine o’clock there, which was putting the escalators on. The he showed us where the office is. The rest of the day we just patrolled. Yeah, sure our purpose was to show that there are security guards working there, but it gets kinda boring to walk around for five hours and you can count only as many cameras as there are.

The day was a bit pointless because we could had actually learnt how to operate there if we were told properly what they do there, where to find things and what to do in different situations. So I wish we would had been told more about the tasks we were supposed to do.

I learned one thing though, and that was that the world doesn’t actually end if you go int the wrong bus. Or don’t know the bus stop. I’ve been kinda terrified of riding a bus, mainly because of those reasons. But if I’ve managed to do it here, I can probably manage it back in Finland. And how is it that here bus drivers actually try to help you, but in Finland they don’t sometimes even bother to answer.

On Monday I’ll be back in the office. On Tuesday I’ll probably be back on The Point. It’s a nice shopping mall though. The shop assistants are friendly, the mall is clean and it isn’t that hard to find anything in the shopping area, because, as said, it’s circles on tip of circles. The staff area is very different, it’s a maze. And it was funny to see that the escalators had a carving ”KONE”. So their internationality wasn’t a fairy tail after all. 

-Mirja

7.4.

Hi,

I started today with self-employing myself by updating the database and unifrom’s list based on some new papers that had appeared in the ”to updated” pile despite our efforts of yesterday to make it smaller. So before Lavinia I came, I updated the papers in the system.

When Lavinia came to office, she gave me some files of employees, whose employment was terminated. I enrolled those terminations, printed the acknowledgements out and added them to the papers from the red files. Finally I took all the papers out of the red files, fastened them together and removed the name tags from the files. To my understanding Henna later on filed the paper piles into the past employee archives.

I also got to do the opposite, which was enrolling some new employees into the database, enrolling and printing their engagements and contracts, putting their papers into red files and finally attaching their name tags. So we’ve gone a full circle considering the office tasks, for this was what I did on the very first day of this work placement.

While doing the new employees files I also made a list of what documents and/or informations they were missing (so I don’t have to do it on next week). Today was very pleasant, because I new most of the time what I was doing and it was nice to start from scratch to enrolling the information and finally seeing everything in order and ready. Completion completes me, I guess.

Tomorrow we’ll get to actually go out on the field. I’m looking forward to it. :) 

-Mirja

5.-6.4.

Hello,

5.6.

We worked together Henna and I and Lavinia gave us such a small-scale task as going through all the employee files and see what documents they are missing. We did this based on the list of what should be in the file in general and every employees personal update request letter (if they had been sent it). So we made a list for Lavinia. Later Lavinia (or more likely: us) will send these employees who had been sent the update letter a warning of failing to update the personal file despite the letter of request. We don’t yet know about the procedures considering the personnel who hasn’t been sent the letter, but probably they’ll be sent it.

We divided the task so I went physically through the files based and told Henna the information to be written on the list to be sent Lavinia. We also worked downstairs so we got to handle employees, customers and phone calls at the same time. We were given with us downstairs also the certificate binder and we got to give certificates to people who came asking for them (in exchange for the identity card of course). We also took in employees personal time sheets to deliver upstairs.

After my lunch break I stayed upstairs as Henna proceeded downstairs with the files. Upstairs I was given a pile of receipts to organize based on the client. What made this interesting was that the receipts were all hand-written and didn’t necessarily have the exact same name on them. But I grasped the system quite fast and this was a great opportunity to get to know some names and localities of the sights. It was also rewarding to see the pile grow thinner, understanding more and more of the sight names and at last seeing the neat, very well organised pile of receipts. The day went again by pretty quickly, even though we actually stayed there for solid eight hours. We also had some guests from Finland in the afternoon. ;)

6.6

We started (or more like did for half of the day) the day by going through the rest of the files to be listed for Lavinia. The employees are listed in three categories by their employment: full timer, part time 15 % and part time 10 %. The full timers make up about 60 % of all employees and part timers together about 40 %, if we think on those terms. Henna managed the day before to do almost half of the full timers on herself by the end of the day. So we had only a small pile of full timers and the part timers to go. Today we switched so I wrote the list and Henna went through the files and told me what to write. Again, we got to answer the phone, make phone calls, give out certificates and accept guests. Today though the time moved very slowly…

When we finished all the files (which actually wasn’t as impossible task as it seemed at first) we updated the database and uniform’s list based on some papers that employees and employers had brought in. We also filed those papers in the employees files or in the returned uniforms file. Today wasn’t anything great, to be honest. But whose all days are, eh?

The top part of the day was when Maria gave us our uniforms. The uniforms are smart and, to my huge surprise, fit actually quite well. The uniform is quite similar to the one I wear at my workplace in Finland. So I felt quite comfortable and home wearing it. I’m very much looking forward to getting on the field.

-Mirja

4.4.

Hello,

Today I checked the rest of the files we started on Monday and updated them into the database. I also went through the files to see if they hadn’t got all the papers needed. Most of them were missing the bank details. A good second was the police conduct. I made a list of what was missing from each person’s file and based on that list and a ready letter template I made the letters to be printed and sent to these employees. Which would had gone a bit quicker and easier if I had remembered to save more than half of them on the first try…

In between I updated the database and the uniform’s list based on some papers the employees and office staff has sent, answered the phone, let guests in and copied some papers. The second biggest task I did was organizing in alphabetical order and filing the monthly time sheets and some certificates.

I got to work a lot on my own, which was nice. Lavinia let me work downstairs (the reception) and due that, I had to answer the phone a lot and let guests in. She taught me also how to transfer the call. Today I felt for the first time that I was actually doing some real work and not just filing a few papers here a few papers there and constantly asking ”What now? What next? What should I do now?”. The day went by quite fast and it was a pretty nice working day. The weather was also really nice and we went to the beach after work.

-Mirja

1.4.

On Friday Henna and I worked some of the time together and some separately, still both with Lavinia. We started by enrolling terminations for some people whose employment wasn’t effected on the engagement day (=they decided they did not want to start the job) and for one person who unfortunately had deceased in a car crash on Thursday. So I enrolled the terminations and removed these people’s papers from their files and Henna stapled them together. I also had to mark the termination date into the database and print the acknowledgements for the terminations out. Now the files wait for the final settlements to be enrolled and after that, they are moved under the stairs in the past employees or put-away archives. And actually I got the questionable honour to go through the past employees files in order to find one employee’s information for further purposes I’m not allowed to discuss about. I fortunately had to go through only 2/4 binders until I found the one needed.

I also tried to enroll some terminations and engagements, that the ETC system hadn’t let us do earlier. Well, the terminations still weren’t all abled, but I got the engagements and contracts for these employees in the system and printed out alright.

After that we got other papers to work on the rest of the day (and we’ll continue on Monday). The papers are new employees who will soon start to work and hadn’t got their information or even their red files yet. First we sorted out their papers into the red files in Lavinia’s defined order, which makes a lot of sense and was helpful, because now we didn’t have to guess which papers belonged to which page. After the sorting, we wrote their names on the name tag document (a template document of how the name tags are written and then the template is printed), printed the document and attached the name tags to the red files. Then the fun part begun.

By which I mean, we had to enroll all of their information into the database. The task itself isn’t that demanding, but at first we started doing this with two different computers. Which we were a bit later told, didn’t work on that database platform. So we had to choose whose work was to be deleted, and unfortunately it was my 4 files vs. Henna’s 1,5 files. But, fortunately Henna’s one file was already there, due to the fact the person, whose file it was, had worked for Signal8 before. So we only lost a half a file.

What other thing makes updating the database a bit hard, is that people usually have about eight pages in their files. The information asked in the database isn’t in the same order (and after the name, not in any logical order, at least known to us) as in the file. So we have  to go back and forth the file to find the information, and sometimes the needed information is handwritten and people’s handwriting is very hard to read. The addresses are also kind of hard to figure out sometimes, when people don’t bother writing them properly or the address is just odd. But to pat myself on the back a bit, I’ve become quite good at this in such a short period of time, finding and understanding the information in the files I mean.

The working day was overall quite pleasant and I’ve grasped quite well and quite fast the work I’m supposed to do. What I could work on is sharing the information that I have instead of being a bit grumpy when I’m asked something and have to stop working for a few seconds to give advise.