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28 March 2024

Shopper makes Dubai students' earn money

Published
By Parag Deulgaonkar

They will be earning more than Dh4,000 by working eight days at Gitex Shopper 2014, but their work isn’t easy as it looks.

They stand at their respective pavilions from 11 am till 11 pm expect for a one-hour break.

Bearing all the noise within the closed doors, these part-time sales executives – mostly university students – are working at Gitex Shopper with one motive: to buy a iPhone 6 or the latest tablet and spend the remaining money on a “grand party”.

“We are not allowed to sit… we have to stand at our pavilion at all times, attending the customers. We cannot leave our pavilion even for a minute except for one-hour break that we get. I am studying chartered accountancy and have taken an eight-day break just to work at Gitex to make ‘quick’ money,” reveals Syed Afsal.

“We are being paid Dh4,000 and I am going to use that money to buy a iPhone 6 for myself. I want to own one (iphone 6), but have no money now to buy it,” he adds.

Shreshta, who is selling laptops at one of the pavilions, says: “All my friends and me want to buy iPhone 6. Its trendy… we don’t wanna ask our parents for money and hence a lot us are working here to earn money so we can buy it (iPhone 6) post-Gitex.”

She admits she isn’t an IT geek, saying, “I have no understanding of technology... what we see is that customers generally come with a preset configuration and ask us about prices and offers. They train us what to speak to when we are hired and hence it’s not a tough job.”

According to part-time sales executives, they stand to make Dh4,000 extra by end of Gitex Shopper as they are paid Dh500 in cash if they achieve their daily sales target.

“If we achieve our sale target for the day, we are given Dh500 as bonus in cash next day morning. It is a motivational factor and we try to achieve our targets. Most of us manage to do so,” says Arahna, who is doing her MBA.

Gitex Shopper 2014 is being held at Dubai World Centre and ends on October 4.