working title

Getting Stuck

One thing they don’t tell you when you’re in school and you get a part-time job just to make money is how easy it is to get stuck in that industry. Most often it is customer service or food preparation. I worked in delis mostly when I was in school, and then when I got out of school and started looking for a job in an office, it kept coming back to the fact that my background and experience were in a deli environment. So when I couldn’t find an office job, guess what I went back to?

I think it’s unfair how many jobs are unwilling to train people who are eager to learn a new industry or environment. Right out of college, I kept seeing ads for entry level positions where at least 2 years of experience were required in that industry. That seems quite paradoxical to me. How am I supposed to get experience in an industry that won’t let me in without experience?

My advice to college students is to find a job within the industry you’re studying or striving to be in.

I also have a background in customer service, due to working in delis and in retail, so often when I’d apply for an administrative position, the company would offer me a position (low paying, entry level, of course) somehow serving customers. Just because I have a background in it doesn’t mean it’s something I want to do! Yes, I have experience dealing with customers, and yes, I’m good at it, but a few years of it, and I start to go crazy. Working in customer service can sometimes be a battle of the wills. For example, in one of my deli jobs, I had a customer who came in about every week and asked for ham. Every single time, I had to ask him which kind of ham he wanted. We had about 12 varieties of ham (which is a low number for most delis), and he would answer, “Cooked ham.” It drove me crazy that he wouldn’t specify which one he wanted when he asked for his order. Why couldn’t he learn to ask for what he wanted?

It bothers me to this day that on my last week of the job, when he asked for ham, I just grabbed the cooked ham and started slicing it. I felt like he won.

But that’s another of my faults – I like people to be very, very specific. I don’t like to take things for granted, so I need detail to make sure I’m getting it right. I have an issue with people training me when they don’t know how to explain what they’re doing. They say things like, “Click on the thing there,” and I have no idea what that means. And they seem to be annoyed when I ask what they’re talking about.

I think I’m good at training people, but I probably give too much detail. When I give driving directions to people, I tend to get them lost by giving too much detail, but I give a lot of detail because that’s the best way I learn personally. I think if we could all realize that we learn differently, we could all get along better. When I say I’m detail oriented, I mean it. But everyone says it, it’s like saying you’re good at multi-tasking. Everyone says it, but does everyone mean it?

There are a lot of things I wish I had learned in college about the workforce. I studied Liberal Arts with a concentration in English, which required me to read and analyze what I’ve read. I was taught to think critically and creatively, which is the exact opposite of what people want in the working world. Bosses want automatons who listen and do exactly what they’re told, nothing more and nothing less. Sure, they say they want you to give ideas and find ways to do your job better, but they don’t really mean that. I wish I had known that when I was choosing my major. I wish I had thought about what type of career I wanted after school. I probably would have chosen a business curriculum like my sister. An English major? No wonder my parents were against me going to college. I was prepared to do absolutely nothing after college, except maybe go on to graduate school to study some more English, which I didn’t want to do.

I don’t get along with other English majors. To me, it was all about bragging about which books and authors you’ve read, allying yourself with Faulkner or Kerouac or whomever, and that gave everyone else your identity. Grammar Nazis bother me, though I might be considered to be one by some. I hated that when I went home from college, someone who used a word incorrectly would say, “Oh, that probably bothers you when people say that!” It doesn’t bother me if people use a double negative when speaking or if they use words like, “ain’t.” Now, if they wrote them in an academic paper, that would be a different story, but I understand there is a difference between written formal works and colloquial dialogue. I won’t correct your grammar when you’re speaking to me, but I might take some whiteout to a grocery store sign that says, “Apple’s.”