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The summer after freshman year of college, I worked for three excruciatingly long months as a checkout person at a grocery store. As a counselor and a coach, I remind my clients of these lessons on a daily basis, but I’m going to translate them to you here, grocery-store style.
Here’s the first one: don’t procrastinate too long or you end up having to take what’s left over. In my case, the procrastination involved a long-distance boyfriend and far too many trips to Athens, Georgia, waiting too long to look for a summer job, and having to work at Delmonico’s in Birmingham (may it RIP). My friends were heading to great internships and working in music stores and I was getting verbally abused and wearing a uniform every day. Enough said. Lesson: don’t wait until you’re desperate to start looking. You’ll limit your choices.
Here’s an important one: don’t cater to bizarre demands. Ever. You’ll get trapped repeating them over the long haul. Example: On my second day of work, a co-worker pointed at a sour-looking customer in a red fedora, looked at me grimly, and said, “You better hope that HE is never in your line!” When I pressed her on the topic, she told me that he was exceedingly picky about how his groceries got handled. As in, he complained to the manager if he perceived that you were “too rough” with his stuff. Three days later, he was in my line. I tried to be as careful as I could. He glared at me menacingly as I took 15 minutes to scan his groceries, hands trembling, placing the Metamucil in the bag as if it were a newborn. With two hands, I placed the orange in it’s own bag so that it wouldn’t be bruised. By the time I finished, he was the only person left in line, and he was quivering. He snatched the bags from my hands and walked over the manager, and started speaking, gesturing wildly and pointing at me repeatedly. I was terrified. After he left, the manager walked over to me, a wide smile on his face. He said, ‘he told me, "that red-haired girl is the only person in this store who KNOWS how to handle groceries, and I won’t go to anyone else again, ever!"” And he didn’t. For the rest of the summer, he lined up every two days to watch me like a hawk and rattle my nerves. Lesson: don't do stuff you feel uncomfortable with just to make people happy in the short run. You're just setting up bad habits that you will have to undo later.
Here’s a good one: be nice to people, for a couple of reasons. First and primarily, everyone you meet is a person too, and it’s crappy to treat people badly, from a karmic perspective. People in service jobs see the worst aspects of humanity on a daily basis, and you have to have worked in retail to truly appreciate this. The nice people stand out in a sea of impatience and intolerance. So get off your high horse, if you are on one, and be nice.
And here’s why you should be nice to people, part 2:when you are kind to people, not in an Eddie Haskell sort of way, but in a genuine way, people want to do nice things for you. They want to help you. One of the nicest people I remember from that summer was Carole Griffin, who I only knew as one of the few customers who looked me in the eye, remembered my name, and was patient and kind. Years later, I met her again, remembered her, and when I learned she owned a local business (Continental Bakery/Chez Lulu), I spent my money there, because I remembered her as someone who has goodness flowing out of her. How this translates to a job search: be really nice to everyone you encounter during your search; you never know who you will meet and how it may help you later.
Conversely, don’t treat people like crap. This is a different rule from “be nice.” Being nice is taking the time to really see people. It’s active. But treating people like crap is a whole other beast, and it’s bad. If you treat people badly, they will remember, and you will get yours later. I’ve worked in enough coffee shops and restaurants to know that the abusive customers get served sneezers (if you don’t know what that is, trust me, you don’t want one). In the rest of the world, here’s how it translates: don’t miss appointments, badmouth people, be disrespectful to assistants or anyone you consider “beneath” you, be disrespectful of people’s time, or take stuff for free without saying “thank you.” It’s rude, and it WILL bite you in the butt, because people do remember.
These lessons don’t just apply in Delmonico’s: they apply in the rest of the world too. Mind your P’s and Q’s, and remember, there is opportunity everywhere you go.
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