The Beginning
Born on the 22nd July 1989 to humble beginnings in South London, England, Rhiannon completed studies her A levels at St Philomena’s Catholic High School For Girls in Carshalton, Surrey, England. She studied Psychology, English Language, English Literature, Music, Biology and Photography.
During school Rhiannon started working for a local window-cleaning firm, cleaning windows (surprisingly enough), filling in numbers and answering phones. She did this for two years until she was 16 and then went to work for British Home Stores. At BHS Rhiannon worked on a variety of departments from the shoes, to the homeware, to the stock rooms. Eventually she ended up working at the customer service desk and assisting the visuals manager. In this time Rhiannon learnt that she had a lot of patience for people who didn’t know their dress size, how to handle money, stock and screaming children, all whilst keeping her department beautifully clean and tidy.
The Late Teens
It was towards the end of her last year of studies that Rhiannon met her husband Kyle. After she had finished her A Level’s she moved into his house share. The house share had a variety of people living there, from an out-of-work chef to a Jehova’s Witness, to a professional hockey player and a few couch surfers, nearly all South African.
Once Rhiannon turned 18 she landed a job as an Assistant Manager in a betting shop, Corals. Rhiannon was only with them for a few months over Christmas handling a very busy shop, lots of money, pressure and drunks, when she was offered a job with an online organic grocery store. Rhiannon is well known to love food (mainly cheese) so she jumped at the chance. After a short holiday in South Africa to meet Kyle’s family and new baby borther, she started at Abel & Cole, for the first time.
At Abel & Cole, Rhiannon worked with an award winning customer service team. Her work involved taking orders, dealing with complaints, giving out free stuff, dealing with hairy drivers, playing shoe golf and taking technical queries for when people let their babies eat gel packs or cooked rotten food.
During her time at Abel & Cole Rhiannon and her partner decided to move to South Africa. So after 6 wonderful months of eating yummy food, Rhiannon hopped on a plane to start a new life.
South Africa: Attempt 1
Once she was settled in South Africa (about two weeks in), Rhiannon landed a bar-job in what can only be described as a white shebeen. After 3 grueling months of 16 hour shifts and smelly beer, Rhiannon called the night life quits and moved down the road to work in a kwikspa. Rhiannon enjoyed a few eventful months of robberies and hijackings at this local community shop until her partner proposed to her romantically in spur. Rhiannon agreed and so they decided to head back to the UK for a 6 month stint to earn a bit of cash.
England: The Tent Time
The problem with going back to the UK was that Rhiannon & Kyle could not find somewhere relatively cheap to stay. So, for lack of a better idea they pitched a tent in Rhiannon’s mothers back garden and lived in it for 6 months (April to September). It was quite comfortable, fitting a double bed, a desk and their suitcases in it. Though towards the end it was rather wet and cold.
This was when Rhiannon joined Abel & Cole for the second time. This time as she knew her stuff, Rhiannon dealt with more involved queries and suggestions, conferred with a lot with technical people and the elusive buying department. She also handled lots of interesting debates on things like farmed salmon, raw milk and why you can’t avoid the odd slug on your lettuce. Rhiannon actually decided to stay for 7 months as she enjoyed it so much, and her Aunt was kind enough to let her stay with her for the last month as it was a bit too cold to live in the tent!
South Africa: Attempt 2
Back in South Africa, Rhiannon decided not to work for a few months and busied herself with getting married, sipping rum on the beach and trying to learn some of the local lingo (not very well, I hasten to add).
They had an unplanned honeymoon in Cape Town with very little cash so took to walking about everywhere. Rhiannon was not impressed on the day Kyle got them lost. They had walked from Sea Point, to Camps Bay to get a taxi to Table Mountain, only to find it was closed due to bad weather and they had to walk from Table Mountain to Sea Point. Kyle claimed he knew the way back and they actually ended up back in Camps Bay and had terrible blisters on their feet!
3 months of semi-bliss passed and Rhiannon went to work for a web design company as a sales woman. She soon realized she was useless at telesales and that driving an hour to work to be useless wasn’t very productive. So, Rhiannon posted an advert on the internet for an employer, interviewed a few companies and settled in to a nice job with Stiletto Marketing. Rhiannon was Stiletto’s web and graphic design lady, their in-house photographer and their SEO expert. Stiletto didn’t work out, even though it was here Rhiannon met her good friend Janay. They both quit at the same time (after about a year) and started looking for new employees.
Rhiannon now has joined the upper ranks of management at iX Online Motoring, running their in-house media-team. She has made some wonderful friends and is thoroughly enjoying the motor industry.
The Rhiannon Hanger story is still in progress…read her blog to keep up to date.
