This mentorship enabled me to gain experience in multiple areas that have added to my personal development. I have gained some valuable communication skills with both management and customers. Becoming a golf technician allowed me to learn more in depth information regarding the equipment and game of golf. This allowed me to be able to ask more open ended questions when engaging with customers in order to see exactly what I can do in order to make their visit as enjoyable and rewarding as possible. I also kept close communications with my supervisor who served as the "Head coach" by giving me the daily line-ups with tasks to complete. We could talk both in person and over the radio using headsets. Therefore, my supervisor Salina was always within reach for any questions I may have or to check in on my progress even if she wasn't near me at the time. Becoming more knowledgeable about the customers and the equipment allowed me to be able to handle situations on my own where I would have previously turned to a manager for assistance.
If a customer came into the store with a broken club, I had the ability to figure out the problem and talk with the customer over all the possible options we have for fixing their club and then perform the repairs without even having to get the manager involved. This experience has helped me to gain some management skills that I can utilize in future positions. Time management being one of them. It was my responsibility to ensure I got all the tasks done in a timely manner while still being available to our guests. For any other students considering getting a internship position at Dick's sporting goods I would highly recommend it. The organization provides very flexible hours, a variety of positions to match your skill sets, and a competitive work environment. My advice would be to join a position that you are passionate about, if you are not passionate about the game of golf then you probably would not enjoy being a golf technician. It requires you to constantly engage in conversations with customers about golf and handling all of the equipment each day. These are all much easier things to do when you are passionate about it.
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At Dick's Sporting Goods we have this online deal going on where you can purchase a dozen MaxFli Matte golf balls and receive free personalization. I have not had anyone ask me about it in store until today when a customer informed me he was having trouble getting his personalization to go through the checkout online. I took him to our Score More computer to see if I could set up his personalization for him. At first it would not let me personalize the golf balls at checkout which was the problem he was having, but then I quickly realized I should type personalization golf balls in the search engine. Sure enough the same exact golf balls showed up, only this time they said personalization on them. We were given three lines where he could choose what he wanted written on the golf ball. On the first line he put Keegan, second line said Long Drive, and third line said Edwards. It showed up nicely on the golf ball. I continued to collect his shipping information and found his estimated delivery time. The estimated delivery was between October 22-26th. He said that this would actually be perfect and we carried on with the order. I am genuinely curious how these will turn out since I have never done a personalization before, so I asked him to let me know how they turn out next time he stops in.
Today I had a guest in the hitting room trying out some clubs. At one point he stops and looks at me and says I ought to have you come swing in here so I can see how this club works for you compared to my results. I was reluctant at first since I have not had the chance to hit a golf ball recently. However, he handed me the club and said to give it a shot so I figured I would entertain the man a little by letting him watch me swing. I immediately got a coaching vibe from him as he started giving me feedback on my golf swing. I told him that I haven't played competitively since I graduated from Seneca East back in 2011. His face lit up when I told him that and he asked if I played for Gary, which was my golf coach in high school. He then asked if I remember him because he was the golf coach for Riverdale High School who used to come and play at our invitationals at our home course of Clinton Heights in Tiffin. I knew he looked familiar, but could not put together where I had seen him before until now. He then told me about how I should say a prayer for my old golf coach, Mr. Gary Manasco, because he was recently diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. I had not known about this up until now and was saddened by that news since he is such a great man and great coach and it is unfortunate he is having to go fight against such a terrible disease. I say it is a small world, because I work in Findlay which is 50minutes away from my Hometown of Attica, so it is not often I run into people who are familiar with my high school or especially my old golf coach.
Today, I did not have much going on in the golf department. Therefore, I would venture out and assist guests in other areas of the store. Then at about 10 a.m I saw an old man walking in with a walker. If I had to guess, I would say he was in his early to late 90's. I immediately approached him and asked if I could help him find anything, he explained that he was looking for a stationary pedal that he could use while sitting on the recliner at home and a light dumbbell for his hands. I could tell he was uncomfortable standing, so I offered to grab our electric cart for him to sit in. He was appreciative of my offer, and we continued on into the fitness section where I showed him our 1 pound neoprene dumbbells. He said he would take two of them and then we went back to the front end where our Score More computer is set up. I checked online for any stationary peddlers for him to use and found one that fit his description perfectly.
I told him I appreciate his patience as I went through the ordering system and that is when he said he had been debating whether or not to do this for a long time. He said he wasn't sure if he should just hang it up, but he wants to be able to have the energy to get his doughnut in the morning. I was both saddened and inspired by this man. It was sad to hear him go on about how he is at a sad state in his life where he is restricted to a recliner all day, but I was inspired that he was still looking for ways to remain active and not give up. I made sure to let him know I was truly glad that he decided to stop in today and make the decision to purchase these items. I walked him and his items out to his vehicle and walked back into the store. I have thought about that old man for the remainder of the day and how if he wasn't making excuses or giving up to exercise and remain active then I should never have to make those excuses either. Today was a day full of mistakes and laughter. I had one of my regular customers who I have talked with and helped re-grip his clubs and multiple occasions come in today with the same Ping driver that I had just sold him about a week ago. I thought that maybe something was wrong with the driver or I had made a mistake by not giving him his tool and headcover or something along those lines. However, as we got to talking he told me how he went golfing with his buddy and showed off his new SF Tec ping driver and his buddy looked at him and goes "That is not an SF Tec". He realized that he had picked out the wrong driver, which is hard to tell because the only difference between the SF Tech and regular Ping driver is the small letters. We got a good laugh about that, and were chatting as I stepped away to assist a few other guest. Then I finally got a break in the action and went into the service room to work on his club. I saw a ping driver resting against the counter, so I quickly grabbed the driver since I knew Doug had been waiting awhile already. As soon as I ripped the grip off of the club it dawned on me that this wasn't the same club because I left his outside by the golf counter. I looked at the shaft and noticed it was a stiff shaft and his was regular and I immediately knew I made a mistake. I walked out to the sales floor and saw Doug standing there with his club in his hand and I felt so embarrassed to tell him what just occurred. We both got a really good laugh about this one and had tears in our eyes. He said he couldn't wait to tell the guys that he had even got Austin making mistakes. I assured him that it was my bad and it was just a horrible coincidence that there was an identical club sitting in the workroom at the wrong place at the wrong time. I was finally able to gather myself and swap the grips onto the correct club for him. At the end of the day, I just ended up costing the store $3.99 to order a new grip for the club inside the workroom. Another tough lesson learned about double checking my work before taking action. Today was a standard day of assisting guests and allowing a couple of customers to demo some clubs in our simulator room. I had one guy who has a really fast and hard swing, which I could tell he played baseball from his stance and form as he swung. I was a little concerned that he might be swinging too hard, but I did not expect it to result in a broken club. Sure enough, as he went to take a giant swing at the ball the head popped loose and flew straight ahead into the net. The customer seemed really concerned that he may have just broken a $499 club, but I reassured him that it was just a demo and the shaft was not standardized. I could see the scuff marks where he had contacted the mat with the club head. Luckily the head was still in good condition which is the most valuable piece, while the shaft was broken at the tip. We have a box of old demo shafts in our back workroom where I was able to find a old driver shaft.
I had to use a heat gun in order to melt the old ferrule off of the new demo shaft, so that I could easily scrape it off using my shovel tool. The reason for this is because the Callaway Rogue driver heads have their own special .335 sleeve adapter ferrule that goes with it. So I had mixed up some of the golf shaft epoxy and used the mixing stick to place epoxy on both the adapter and the new shaft to insert the adapter and glue it together. I let the club sit for about an hour and a half before grabbing the Callaway selector tool to screw the club head back on. Drivers are different from irons in the fact that many can have their lofts adjusted using the tool so they are held together by screws through the adapter rather than glued together like an iron. After about 4 hours the demo club was back up and running! Today, I had a gentleman come into the golf shop with a Nike putter that he had found while bargain shopping online. Nike does not even make golf clubs anymore so I have yet to ever work on any of their clubs. The reason he brought it into the pro shop was because they sent him the club and it had arrived with the grip on it facing sideways. There is a flat ridge and a marker that is supposed to point down the front of the shaft to guide your fingers, but his grip had the flat part facing about 45 degrees to the left of the center. Therefore, it felt weird on your hands when holding it and did not line up correctly. He had brought in a similar putter grip to the one that was on the club for me to replace the old one with. The original grip was still in decent enough shape that he wanted to keep it as a backup, so I had to charge him $5.99 to save the grip as opposed to the regular grip cost of $2.99.
Trouble began as soon as I got to the workroom and tried to remove the grip. I quickly realized that since it was on sideways it would not slip off as easily even when I used the needle to lube up the inside. I called for backup, and our operations lead named Jeremy came to my aid. together we tried to use a shoe horn to reach inside the grip and pry the inside loose from the tape in order to either turn the grip or get it to slide off. After numerous attempts we had finally managed to get the grip off. However, I noticed the shaft seemed to be a little bent from us yanking and turning the old grip to pry it loose. The general manager came to my workroom to take a look and he assured me that this putter was old and that he wouldn't be surprised if the putter came that way. I had never saw a Nike putter before, so I wasn't sure how the bend was supposed to look. After talking to the customer he chuckled and let me know I didn't do anything wrong because the shaft had a natural bend. I was relieved to shake his hand and be able to have him walk away with a saved grip and his putter intact! Today there was a young man who came in and was interested in getting a new set of irons. After talking with him, I actually found out that he is a Freshman at Tiffin University and had joined the golf team. He informed me that the coaches suggested he gets his clubs lengthened to better suit his height. I asked what clubs he currently uses and discovered he still has an old box set of Wilson Ultra clubs from a few years ago. I introduced him the new the Callaway XR clubs from 2016 that had improved features and were built for standard length. He could immediately feel a difference in the way the clubs felt. I told him that if he purchases the iron set then we will be able to do a club fitting for free with his purchase. He thought about it for awhile and then came and found me asking if we could do the fitting today. I had recently received my certification for club fitting so I was thrilled to have my first customer.
I started by letting him get loosened up by taking some practice swings as I asked him some questions from our club fitting interview form. The questions asked about his average handicap, how often he plays, the type of results he hopes to achieve and much more about his golf game. Once I completed the interview I put some Marker tape on the head of the shaft as well as the bottom. Then I placed a plastic sheet down on the mat for him to hit off of. The tape marks where the ball contacts the face of the club as well as where the bottom of the club makes contact with the ground. After a few trials, I discovered he would likely not benefit from a longer club as his contact point was already midway between the center and heel. I suggested that he try the clubs for a few weeks to try to get comfortable with them before making a decision. That is because it would cost him over $100 to get all 12 of his clubs lengthened, so I want to be sure it is the right move before going that route. Especially, since he already saw improvement with the new clubs themselves. We came to agreement and set up a follow-up appointment in my calendar where he could come in to complete the fitting process. During my shift today, I had received the shaft to one of the broken clubs that showed up in our truck last week. I went back to the service room in order to get started installing the shaft. The first step was to clean out the inside of the club head in order to get all the excess dry glue out from the inside. I used a wire brush to scrape the inside walls clean until nothing more would come out as I tapped it on the counter. Once I had the head cleaned, I had to take the end of the shaft and measure the diameter in order to figure out which size ferrule I would need to place on the shaft. A ferrule is a component of most golf irons and some golf woods: it is the small, usually black plastic cover that goes over the point where the shaft enters the hosel of the club head. The purpose of the ferrule is to provide a smooth transition between the shaft and hosel. With a ferrule, a golfer doesn't see the sometimes sharp edges of the hosel where the shaft enters the clubhead. The ferrule covers that up. The next step is to put about a quarter siz of golf shaft epoxy on a plastic sheet and mix it up to create a strong glue. I then dip the end of the shaft around in this epoxy and proceed to shove the end of the shaft into the hosel pushing the ferrule down the shaft. Then I use a wipe to quickly get the excess epoxy off the shaft before it dries. Once I have it put in, all I could do was wait for it to fully dry which usually takes 24 hours. Therefore, I put a note on it and set it off to the side as a reminder to come back to it later and test it.
The majority of the day today was spent going over the merchandise exposure and loss prevention standards in my department following yesterdays incident with the shoplifter. I was given a Checklist/Quiz sheet where I had to walk around and try to detect any errors. The first thing on the list was to check that the sensor alarm was working properly and the de-tagger was properly locked and secured inside the simulator room. After that I had to check all of the golf clubs to make sure that anything over >$99 in value had a alpha lock tag secured around it. The next step was to ensure that all of the box sets out on the floor had a piece of tape over the flap that opens up the box. I carried around a roll of tape and secured each of the boxes that had broken or missing tape. The next thing I checked were that all of the golf balls that were priced over >$25 dollars had a soft tag attached to the sides of them. After I completed these steps I had to move to the golf apparel and make sure all Under Armour, Addidas, and Nike clothing has a sensor tag placed in the seams of the pants and under the collar of the polos. It is important that we have all these security measures in place to try and help prevent future shoplifters from attempted to take from our store again. I know I certainly never want to go through that process again, so now I pay closer attention than ever before to follow all LP standards and provide great customer service.
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AuthorAustin Gossett. I have a Bachelors in Health and Physical education & currently a Graduate Student in Sports Administration at Tiffin University. Archives
October 2018
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