A Guide to Working in a Flower Shop for People Who Want to Write Flower Shop AUs
Disclaimer: I have worked in exactly one flower shop. I’ve worked there for over a year, but this doesn’t give me knowledge of the whole industry. Also my boss is a fucking nightmare, so there’s that.
Everybody/nobody actually knows the language of flowers. Some florists do, like me, because I’m a nerd. Some don’t. The main point is that flower meaning, while fun and sometimes helpful, comes second to what looks good and what’s available.
Greenhouses/Growing plants in the shop. That doesn’t really happen? We have some potted plants and succulents and some orchids, but we’re not a garden/houseplant store really, and we aren’t really the place to go for advice on keeping your house plants alive. We get our flowers from wholesalers who get them from growers. The majority of the time, we have nothing to do with growing the flowers.
Putting together a bouquet is easy. Look, there’s a reason you hire other people to do it. Not everything looks good, and you need to have a good sense of color and shape to put together a good-looking bouquet. That said…
Putting together a bouquet is hard. It’s not that hard. You learn the basics and it’s pretty simple. Work in odd numbers because that helps round things out. Use filler flowers. Most things will look good together because they’re flowers. If you want to get into vase arranging and fancy shit then yeah, it’s hard. But if you’re just putting together a basic bouquet, it’s not as hard as you think it is.
Florists know all about flowers. I’ll grant you we know more than your average person, but there isn’t like, florist school where you learn the names of everything and how long it lasts and shit. I mean, there are classes you can take, but they’re not actually necessary to being a florist? I majored in psychology and here I am. We’re learning on the fly here, and your average assistant at a flower shop is going to run into flowers they don’t know sometimes.
2. Tasks Your Florists Can Be Doing at Work
Obviously, there’s your customer assistance and bouquet making, but there’s a lot of work, and much of it is really not glamorous.
Processing flowers - unpackage, strip off the bottom leaves, and re-cut the stems, this is done when we get new flowers in
Processing roses - takes forever, includes getting rid of thorns, roses are a bitch to process and thank god my coworker actually likes doing that
Re-cutting flower - every few days, everything should get a fresh trim and some new, clean water so they stay fresh
Bleaching buckets - we bleach everything. It’s terrible. Most of it is vases and buckets that we keep the flowers in but also coolers.
Pretty much any cleaning - floristry is messy work, there will be petals and leaves and dirt all over, and we clean a lot. I probably clean more than I make bouquets…aaand now I’m sad.
Making pre-made bouquets - sometimes people want to just grab something and go, so we need to keep some pre-made bouquets in stock.
Wedding work - a huge part of our business’s profit comes from weddings, and they take a lot of work, including:
Making boutonnieres and corsages (also done for prom and other events)
Making centerpieces (also done for many other events)
Wedding consultations (the soon-to-be-spouses consult with the designer on what they want their wedding to look like and how much it will cost)
Packing up and delivering
Watering plants - if we do keep live plants, we have to take care of them
Filling water tubes - if you’re buying flowers and won’t put them in water for over an hour, we put these neat little tubes of water on the ends so they don’t dry out. You know how we get those tubes full of water? We fill them. By hand. Put them in a bucket of water and then put the little caps on. It takes forever. We do it anyway.
Taking orders - people order over the phone or online, I spend a lot of time on the phone trying to talk people through the ordering and delivering process
3. Things a Florist Hears Too Often
“Wow, this must be such a nice place to work!” and variations. (It’s not. Like, it is, because I love flowers and making arrangements and stuff, but it’s not because it’s retail, and my boss is a nightmare.)
“How long will these last?” (I don’t know. I never know. “About a week,” I say. I don’t know that. No one does. Probably about a week though.)
“I don’t really know anything about this, haha.”/ “You’re the expert!” (when I ask what flowers they want. You know what you want better than I do. Please just tell me. I can’t put a bouquet together for you if I don’t know what you want.)
“Where do these flowers come from?” (For us, mostly Holland, Ecuador, and Cambodia. No, it’s not local. Yeah, that sucks. I know. I just work here.)
“That’s expensive.” (No shit. Flowers cost money. We shipped these overseas so your ungrateful ass could buy peonies in the middle of winter. Get over it.)
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