Ode to the Unappreciated

I think it takes approximately one month at any job (usually your first) to realize that the work you do there is taken for granted. Most likely not by your superiors, but by customers and the clients you work for. Put it this way, I’ve been working since the age of 13 at enough jobs to cover pretty much most of the career spectrum and the most important lesson I’ve learned at all the jobs collectively was that no one gives a crap.

Well, they don’t give a crap if you’re doing your job right.

Think about it.

You walk into a cafe and place your order. You’re shown a vacant table that you promptly de-vacate, you people-watch for a while until your mochaccino and chocolate cherry cake arrives, magically, in front of you, you eat the cake and drink the coffee, leave your dishes where they are and walk away. Chances are that you won’t remember anything extraordinary about that cafe unless either the cake or the coffee were above average, and that’s because everything was done right.

Now, if you walk in, wait twenty minutes for someone to serve you, wait longer for your food and drinks to arrive, find the coffee to be cold brown water that tastes worse than it looks and your cake to be dry and – not only that – not the cake you ordered, the possibility of you remembering the cafe later is much, much higher. Granted, it would be gaining infamy not fame but press is press right?

The point I’m trying to make, though, is that when you do your job right, no one cares. When you do it wrong, people kick up a fuss. Sometimes they’ll call your superior so that they can bitch about you to someone they expect to punish you, bring your mood down and use you as a stepping stone for their own personal confidence boost, get it out of their system and leave. It’s all in a day’s work for them really. And then you go back to your own day’s work, doing things properly and getting no appreciation for it – fame or infamy – whatsoever.

What’s funny is that when you’re in that situation, complaining about being unappreciated when you’re working hard and doing a good job, you don’t realize that you yourself are taking very important things for granted. Namely, your superiors.

I work at a book store, Whitcoulls, in a busy shopping center in Auckland city. I haven’t been at the job long but I adore it. When I first started, the manager who trained the new recruits told us “this job is fun, every day is different and dynamic. Be prepared to work hard and play harder” Considering I’d worked at a book store previously – as well as the rest of the career spectrum as previously mentioned – the speech went in one ear and out the other for me. All induction speeches are like that, people need to sell the gig for employees to be willing to take it on. Saying a job is dull enough to have your braincells pitch themselves out your ears every few seconds won’t get many people psyched up to work. Funnily enough, she was right. The job is ridiculously fun, even on days when people get nasty and you’re so tired and hungry due to skipped breaks that you don’t know which way is up anymore.

In my short time working at Whitcoulls I’ve made some amazing friends and experienced some brilliant – famous and infamous – customers and customer situations. But whenever I’d need some help I’d call up a manager to put in a code, get rid of a difficult client who required a superior entity to blame for my apparent ineptitude, give me a break when I’d gotten too sick of one station or switch me out when I wanted a specific job on the floor. It always seemed so easy, push a button on your radio, whine your request down the line and, magic, it gets fulfilled. Usually. I’ve had to work a pretty hefty quota to earn the right to some leniency, but nonetheless the process was rather like utilizing a magic lamp with unlimited work-wish capacity.

Two days ago, I was offered a role as one of the supervisors for the store. I was incredibly flattered and honored, and accepted. Yesterday was my first day of training and my brain feels so full that I wish some braincells WOULD pitch themselves out of my ears if only to make room for all the information I now need to know.

It’s a funny feeling when you know, somewhere at the back of your mind, that everything the managers do is not easy, and then suddenly you are one and realize just how NOT easy the job is. On the floor you work hard and play harder – as promised – and every so often you notice the managers spending a great deal of time off the floor or generally wandering around looking important. Sometimes they do pages, sounding ridiculously professional. Because of this you come to the conclusion that until you need a manager, they just exist for the sake of looking pretty and paging so that you don’t have to. When you start training to be a supervisor – call them and managers synonymous in this case, for ease of understanding – suddenly you’re bombarded with tasks ranging from making the store look good to organizing promotions to composing your own pages, preparing spreadsheets, emailing people more important than you and taking care of a store that is worth more than you can make in a lifetime. On top of that you have to wander around and look important and page the store so that others don’t have to.

So let this be an ode to the unappreciated managers. Think about just how much they have to do when you call them up to complain about someone who happened to serve you a little slower than your magnificently busy schedule allows for. Chances are they’re run off their feet, hungry and in the middle for three or four games of email or phone tag.

All the while looking important and paging the store so that others don’t have to.

Don’t get me wrong, though, I’m very excited to be a supervisor, just that in the first four hours of my training I’ve had to remember more than I’ve learned in the month I’ve worked there as a customer service assistant and I’m worried that I’m going to forget something vital and get my ass kicked for a very good and legitimate reason. And considering how many highly respected people vouched for me to get this job, I have more to lose than just a title. Though who knows? Maybe in a few weeks I’ll be playing a few ongoing games of email tag while writing up six spreadsheets and cash counting like the best of them.

On top of that, I got my hair straightened this week, making my life just that little bit easier, and I had a fantastic photoshoot with Mack the night before last. It was Fight Club themed and I’ll link the photos on here (or a link to them in any case) as soon as the maestro allows the edited masterpieces to be viewed by the adoring public. Suffice to say that much smoke and fake blood was involved.

Songs this week:

-+- Spectrum – Florence and the Machine
-+- I Need A Doctor – Eminem
-+- Counting Bodies Like Sheep (To The Rhythm of the War Drums) – A Perfect Circle

Bandit, out.

January 27, 2012 | Categories: Late Night Drivel, Things to Ignore When V Gets Pensive, Zuihitsu Noodle-Soup | Tags: Mack, student life, whitcoulls life and times, work | 8 Comments »