We are more than what you see

In my short life of 22 years I have never experience working as a waiter. I have only had one job and that is the job I first ever applied to and I got it. Never have I experienced other jobs. Although I have not worked as a waiter, I got myself into the mindset of a waiter as I was reading this article, and let me tell you, I got offended by the things mentioned in this reading.

I work in retail and everything that was mentioned in this article I have also experience while doing my own job. I have overheard people talk down on those who work customer service. That they feel superior to us for the fact that there is no degree required to work in either retail or waitressing.

Although there is no degree required to work for either job, there is a lot of knowledge and patient that one must have.

In the Article Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers by Tony Mirabelli, Economist Peter Drucker argues that “interactive service workers lack the necessity education to be knowledgeable workers.” And continues saying that interactive services lack the “problem identifying, problem solving, and other high level abilities to work in other occupations.”

Maybe this guy needs to go back to school and educate himself again before making such arguments. A person does not simply work as a waiter or waitress because they lack education but rather to survive. We live in the time where being knowledgeable is no longer good enough to find a job. This time they require more than brains to manage to get into a well “educated” career job. If you don’t know anyone in the industry you are trying to get into chances are that you most likely won’t make it in. So one has to keep looking in the meantime, try to survive in any possible way. That brings one down to customer service jobs.

90% of the time these jobs are hiring so it makes sense to have them as your back up plan. Everyone thinks you don’t need any special knowledge to work here but let me tell you, you do. And it requires more than “educational” skills to work in such jobs.

Working in a customer service kind of job require you to have a more open mind and be practical to any circumstances you encounter. For example, we meet with a lot of people on a daily basis and we experience moments with people like, gradations, birthdays, proposals, weddings to the saddest like losses. We are required to adapt to such occasions and be smart about how to work with each person you help.

You aren’t going to give someone that’s celebrating their birthday the same service someone that’s experiencing a loss. Your tone and approach to both occasions matter. We don’t involve “routine and repetitive tasks that require little education” like argued in the article. If our repetition was the same everyone would have the same boring scripted like experience but it is not that way. We are smart enough to know how to treat people. We bring them joy and comfort. We have to be skilled enough to approach a customer including those who are complicated customers.

We work as people’s friends, therapist, problem solvers and we do our job. We experience more than any 9-5 job does. They are the ones that actually have a repetitive job that requires them filing, reading and writing. Our jobs require more than what they ask for.

If you can’t be patient and survive a difficult customer, you end up breaking down. No one sees this until they are in our shoes. We have the education that grants us the power of solving customer problems while they un-educationally yell at us with their vulgar language blaming us for their bad days.

True, we work in jobs that don’t require education. We work in jobs that require MORE than an education. We work in a job that goes beyond serving the customer and we become their problem solvers, their friends, their loss companions and their diaries.