Has my brain died whilst I cared for my family! It feels like it!

Give yourself more time to make a rather large adjustment!

Sorry, posted too soon. I suggest that you keep at one of these jobs for a while and see how it goes. If your employers say the mistakes don't matter, believe them! You will probably find that your confidence grows quite quickly. You are adjusting to working for someone else after working to your own pace. Adjustments take time. If, after a while, you find you just can't hack it, well at least you gave it a go. Good luck!

grannot everyone makes mistakes in the training of a new job regardless of age!

The more often you carry out the same procedures on the till the more efficient you will become.

Go back in this afternoon and just take it one step at a time you will be fine, its like learning to drive you think you will never be able to bring it all together then all of a sudden everything clicks into place.

Give yourself a chance, you cant expect to go into a new job and be proficient immediatley.

Dont worry about making a mess of things with customers you will find that most are very patient when they realise you are training.

Give yourself a break go for it, you will be fine.

Thanks everyone - I will take it easy on myself, and hope everything clicks into place. I think I was put off by the fact that the 3 much younger ladies who trained with me seemed to pick it up really quickly and seemed to remember everything - whilst I seemed to have a sieve for a brain! Fingers crossed for this afternoon,

Let us know how you got on! I'm sure you'll be fine. Just try and relax (easier said than done, I know) and take your time. You'll soon find yourself getting into the flow of things.

You will wonder why you fretted in a couple of weeks time,you will be
enjoying what you do and will be able to laugh at yourself,so just take
it easy and let everyone know you are training and you will take a little longer than usual. Good luck

I agree, stick with it.
When we learn something new we go through the following stages:
Unconscious incompetence (dont know what's involved)
Conscious incompetence (OMG I cant do this!)
Conscious competence (I can do this if i keep calm, concentrate and tell myself I CAN do it)
Unconscious competence (I can do it without thinking about it)

It takes a lot of repetition and a bit of time to go through. Like learning to drive. Most are at stage 3 when they pass the test.

I have found in new job it takes about 2 weeks to get to grips with new computerised systems. Then suddenly it starts to flow.
Also - negative thinking always works. You need to tell yourself you CAN.

Before I became quite ill a few years ago (completely recovered now, thankfully!) I used to lead a team of carers in an establishment for adults with severe disabilities. I knew I did a good job, which was also very demanding and stressful. After my recovery, I decided not to go back to that type of work and applied for a job in a little shop that had opened in the village. I got the job, and did the relevant training, which entailed learning the tills and also how to decide when the pies etc should be thrown away, and when the cakes didn't need to be thrown away! I just could NOT master the tills and worried myself sick and had sleepless nights about when to throw the pies away (in case I sold someone a bad one!) I'm afraid I had to pack my job in, because it was too much of a worry! The staff were lovely, (and young, easily picking up all of the till training and pie dates, etc!) I went back to my original job - this time dealing with staff training. I really empathise with you grannot! Stick with it and don't be wimp like I was!

grannot; sometimes at the supermarket I watch the people working at the tills and know that I could never do their job, especially if there was a long queue of people; I would go into complete panic mode. I would quite happily stack shelves [although I'd be a bit anal about the tins all facing the right way etc]. It's probably not the job for you. The things you've learned over the past twenty years will be invaluable in the right job..patience, understanding etc.

Maybe the people who have 'trained' you haven't done so properly?

Good News everyone, yesterday was much better! I still can't remember a great many things that can be done on the tills but I'm remembering much more than I did. The supervisors were wonderful and made me feel less like a complete incompetent fool and the time went really quickly! So it's chin up and keep going and hopefully in 6 months time I won't be worrying about it! I did make one major mistake - the supermarket has a clocking in box unfortunately I remembered to clock in but completely forgot to clock out so I will appear to have spent all weekend working! Ooops!

It would've been worse if you'd forgotten to clock in though!!! Good luck!

You will have lots of overtime in next months pay I am so pleased you found it easier today, you will find thing get so much easier every shift you are in.

Well done, grannot!

So pleased that your day went well, in a couple of weeks you will wonder what on earth you were panicking about. Well done!

Just a quick update. Everything is falling into place at work now, I still find odd things that I get stuck on but they are fewer and fewer and I'm actually enjoying my job. I can't be doing to badly as I'm being offered overtime! So thank you everyone for the encouragement and I'm glad I stuck it out!

granot, I feel so proud and really happy for you.
GO GIRL!

Well done grannot for sticking with it when you could have easily have given up, I am so glad you are doing well and enjoying it.

Good for you! Delighted that it's gone so well. Hope that you are feeling very proud of yourself

Really good news, was probably a lack of confidence rather than the skills to do the job