Forecourt Supervisor
The Co-operative Group (The Co-op)

Janette R

00:00:03 My name’s Janette R, I’m a forecourt supervisor. I order fuel, serve customers and check weight stocks. I’ve been working at the petrol station for four and a half years, two years as a supervisor.

00:00:19 At school I was a very shy, quiet person. Not really mingle with too many people and just keep back from the crowd.

00:00:31 I was a housewife before I started working here. To start with when I started here, I took the job because the hours suited me with having children and coming out to work. The hours were great. Now I enjoy the job. I like working in a petrol station because it’s smaller, less people to work with. There’s only four people under me. I enjoy working in a smaller group more than in a larger group. Just more contact with people, you’re working with them all the time and it’s the same people you’re dealing with. We’re all close knit and friendly so we all get on very well. In a supermarket there’s a lot of people going about where you’re not in close contact all the time with everybody.

00:01:16 To work in a petrol station you don’t have to have any skills. You’re trained when you start so no qualifications are necessary. The longer you work there, the more training you’re given to do other jobs. The training you receive all you hear is competent persons, learning how to work with fuels, all the different fuels, octane levels and things like that. You also learn the money side of things, how it all works out on the computer.

00:01:47 The things I hate most at work are people not doing as they’re supposed to do. Not filling shelves, not tidying the forecourt up, not cleaning the toilet and leaving dirty cups lying about. If things are not going right with the staff, I have to tell them where they’re going wrong. I have to discipline everything else along that way. I don’t mind telling them how to do things properly as long as they correct themselves in the future in how they do things.

00:02:19 Problems I have to deal with at work is mostly people putting the wrong fuels in their car, drive-offs – people taking fuel and driving without paying so you’re having to involve the Police. That’s about the worst things that happen. If someone drives off, we do have a camera system so first of all we’ll phone the Police, stop the video, rewind it and play it back and see if we have everything on film that happens. Then the Police come over, take a statement then after that they just take the video away and see what they can get off it.

00:02:53 The next few years I’ll just be sticking how I am at the moment because I have a family so I don’t want to forward my career at the moment. I’ll be staying here because the hours suit me, I can near enough please myself what hours I work, so with having a family I can get home if anybody’s ill. I work during the day when my daughters are at school and my sons are out to work and I finish work when my children come home from school, so I’m there all the time for them.

ENDS