Interview With The Supervisor

A few days back, I went to "Ochado" located at Genting Klang PV12 for an interview. To my disappointment, the manager wasn't around. The only person-in-charge was only the supervisor for the specific branch. I asked for the owner or the manager for the branch and the girl at the counter just replied "they won't be around for quite some time". I wasn't sure what she was saying was the truth or they were just keeping themselves out of trouble. But nevermind, Then I before proceeding to interviewing, I bought myself a cup a "Ochado Pearl Milk Tea" to get our conversations started.

            My personal favourite cup of tea from Ochado. The "Ochado No.1 Pearl Milk Tea"

After buying, I tried to start my conversation with the cashier and I asked for the person-in-charge for the moment. Then, she pointed her finger toward a man who were just beside her playing his phone. And politely he asked if he could be at my service. Then, I explained that I was from TARC doing my assignment on franchise and I need to interview a few questions. Then he nodded his head. I asked him what was his position in the branch and he replied "I'm just the supervisor, what question is there that you need to ask?"

Then I proceed with some of my questions :-

• How much does your franchise gross per year? Or how much does it net?
• "I'm so sorry that this is a very private question and I'm sorry that I could not answer you. I'm afraid that if I were to answer you, and this informations were leaked to my boss, I would get pretty messed up."

• Does the franchiser give you enough assistance in operating your business?
• "Yes, they do provide training for new workers here. But the rest of it. It's all about ourselves, franchiser only provides training and some location justification before our business starts. And yes, they do train the new workers."

• How many hours , on average, do you work a week?
• "Some, works for the whole day it is open and some works only part time. So, it really depends on the specific worker. But our shop opens daily from 10am to 10pm. So, it's a 12 hours job and usually our workers works half of the day in the morning and another different batch works half day in the evening."

• How often do you get vacation?
• "Urm, each of the worker are entitled to take a day off once a week and it not encouraged to take the day off during the weekends because it is our peak time of our sales and we need more staffs to cater to the customers. But the bad news is that we even have to work during some of the public holidays. Well, this is what the F&B life is, where there are holidays, that is the time where our sales reaches peak."

• Does your franchisor provide on going training and support to you?
• "Yes, as I just answered, they provide us with the training. New workers gets their 1month training and support? We're all on our own other than the training.

• If you had to do it all over again, would you purchase a franchise in this system? Why?
• "Yes, if it were me, yes, if it were here in the same place. This is because the students now are more willing to spend on their entertainment fees. Unlike the time when I was studying. Yes, so it's a yes."

This is the short interview that will be listed here in the blog. There are some more questions that I did asked but a lot of them were turned down due to the privacy that the boss or the owner of the franchise requested. There were more questions that I've asked that I cannot be posting here and this is with all due respect with the request from the supervisor.

The rest of them do not want to be on the screens for "God-Knows-Why" reasons. So I asked one of them to help me take the picture.