Flashback: My working experience in Hush Puppies Genting

When I was studying in UNITEN, we students used to have a long 3 months holiday if we don’t want to take up special semester. I am not a fan of special semester because it’s was a complete waste of time and money. There were only 8 hours of class time per week during special semester and yet we had to pay the apartment rent and other living expenses.

So instead of wasting money, I decided to make money during one of the 3 month holidays. At first I was thinking of working part time in Kangar as I don’t have to worry about accommodation and transportation problems, but the salaries there weren’t “encouraging” enough.

Just before I decided to stay at home to "shake legs" for 3 months, my friends suggested that I try looking for sales job in Genting Highlands. They said that the pay was good and the employers usually provide accommodation within walking distance to the work place. So I quickly bought a bus ticket to Genting Highlands to try my luck.

The First World Plaza

I decided to look for a job in one of the shop lots inside First World Plaza, a shopping center in Genting Highlands and I was lucky to find a job as a part time sales assistant in Hush Puppies.

Hush Puppies is an international brand of contemporary, casual footwear for men, women and children. The price range for the shoes can easily reach RM300 because of the high quality of the shoes. So not all poor people like me can purchase shoes from Hush Puppies.

Why a sad-looking dog as the logo?

At first I don’t think that my workload will be high because I thought that not many people will buy shoes in Genting Highlands. Although the price of the shoes is the same with other Hush Puppies outlets throughout Peninsula Malaysia, but I thought that people come to Genting Highlands to play roller coasters, or to gamble, not to do some shopping.

The huge amount of stocks in the storeroom

But turned out I was wrong, the shop was full of customers during holidays or weekends. Most of the customers were foreigners as they have greater buying power compared to Malaysians. Usually tourists from the Middle East or China were rich and they won’t be bothered by the price of the shoes.

During my 2 months working life in Hush Puppies, I served many weird customers and I can still remember a few until today.

I once served an auntie from China who had trouble choosing the right size and color of the shoes that she liked. Size 6 was too small for her and size 7 was too big, to add on her misery, she also cannot choose the right color for the shoes. So she ended up very tulan and bought all of the shoes. All size 6 and 7 and all the color of the shoes that she liked. She paid all the shoes with her platinum credit card and walked out happily.

There was also a customer from Middle East who bought 15 pairs of shoes amounted to thousands of ringgit. I don’t know why he bought so many shoes but I know that he’s damn rich. Maybe he got oil wells behind his house.

Hush Puppies did have a small amount of local customers when I worked there, most Malaysian customers bought shoes there because they had to. Some bought shoes because their shoes were spoilt during their holidays in Genting Highlands. And the most frequent local buyers were all the ah pek who wear sandals or slippers to the casino. The casino prohibited sandals and slippers so the ah pek had to buy shoes from Hush Puppies. They usually picked the cheapest shoes in 5 minutes and headed straight to the casino.

Not everyday is peak season for Hush Puppies, during weekdays when only a few customers came in, I usually just sat there with my colleagues chatting or commenting on every passerby. And when we were really bored, we did some stupid things, we played hide and seek in the storeroom, we went to kacau the pretty salesgirls next door, or even went to toilet many times just for the sake of loitering around the plaza.

May Kwan trying to scare everyone in the storeroom

What we did when we were bored

Even though we had to bear with smelly feet and smelly shoes all the time but it was fun working with a bunch of fun colleagues. There was no politics inside the Hush Puppies working environment because our salaries were fixed and not based on commission basis, we don’t have to fight against each other for commission.

By far this was the most fun job I’ve ever had, I don’t have to crack my brain for the job and the working environment was great. But it was just a part time job, I earned some extra pocket money and it’s time to move on.

I hope my job can be as fun as this. ;-)