“What does your vanilla ice cream taste like?” he asked. Dumbfounded, I responded with the only reply I could think of that wouldn’t get me fired, “Err...it tastes like vanilla bean. Would you like a sample, sir?” He responded, however, exactly as I had hoped he wouldn’t, “No, I don’t want a sample. I just really want to know what it tastes like.” What in my life could have prepared me for a fully-grown, English speaking man asking me what vanilla tastes like? My high school certainly hadn’t taught a class on “How to Interact with Idiotic Customers”. In fact, high school hardly prepared me for my time working. Surprisingly enough, analyzing Emily Dickinson’s poetry and using proper Turabian formatting did not come up in the interview. Instead,
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If I studied hard and prepared well, I would receive a better grade and positive feedback. This system provided a nice, transparent cause-and-effect relationship between work and reward. I am also lucky enough to have had excellent teachers in high school. All of them greatly cared about me and my personal development: if they thought they could help me improve on something, they would ask to see me outside of class; if I needed extra help, all of them would make time for me. It only made sense to me that if I put in the effort, I would receive immediate praise from the person responsible for reviewing my work, so why didn’t it happen at the store? To answer this question simply: my coworkers and bosses treated me as an adult instead of treating me as child - they expected and trusted me to understand what I had done well and what I needed to improve on. If I didn’t know how to do something, no one would notice and come over to teach me, because everyone had his or her own work to do. If I asked someone to instruct me on how to do something, however, anyone would happily slow down and explain it. At first, this newfound responsibility for my own performance scared me - I didn’t know what it was like to work without continual guidance and surveillance. For the first few weeks, I constantly feared my coworkers judging the size and …show more content…
While I learned many things about how to conduct myself in a professional environment and how to interact with all kinds of people, The main realization I’ve come to is that most of my problems could have been solved by asking the right question. I only needed to ask how I was performing in work, how to ring-up an ice cream sandwich, or whether I could work four-to-five day weeks instead of five-to-seven day weeks. Working with a team of amazing people taught me that asking for help, despite sometimes feeling like an inconvenience, actually enables me to better contribute to the group effort. I only have one question that remains unanswered: what do you do when someone asks you what vanilla tastes
If I studied hard and prepared well, I would receive a better grade and positive feedback. This system provided a nice, transparent cause-and-effect relationship between work and reward. I am also lucky enough to have had excellent teachers in high school. All of them greatly cared about me and my personal development: if they thought they could help me improve on something, they would ask to see me outside of class; if I needed extra help, all of them would make time for me. It only made sense to me that if I put in the effort, I would receive immediate praise from the person responsible for reviewing my work, so why didn’t it happen at the store? To answer this question simply: my coworkers and bosses treated me as an adult instead of treating me as child - they expected and trusted me to understand what I had done well and what I needed to improve on. If I didn’t know how to do something, no one would notice and come over to teach me, because everyone had his or her own work to do. If I asked someone to instruct me on how to do something, however, anyone would happily slow down and explain it. At first, this newfound responsibility for my own performance scared me - I didn’t know what it was like to work without continual guidance and surveillance. For the first few weeks, I constantly feared my coworkers judging the size and …show more content…
While I learned many things about how to conduct myself in a professional environment and how to interact with all kinds of people, The main realization I’ve come to is that most of my problems could have been solved by asking the right question. I only needed to ask how I was performing in work, how to ring-up an ice cream sandwich, or whether I could work four-to-five day weeks instead of five-to-seven day weeks. Working with a team of amazing people taught me that asking for help, despite sometimes feeling like an inconvenience, actually enables me to better contribute to the group effort. I only have one question that remains unanswered: what do you do when someone asks you what vanilla tastes