Personal Narrative: The Idea Of Professionalism

In my short 21 years, I have had three jobs working in restaurants, each one different from the last. I hope to someday earn a degree in hospitality management and own a small hotel or restaurant. One thing that is a constant in all jobs, no matter where you work or who you work with is the idea of professionalism. I was given a crash course in professionalism when I worked at McDonald’s, but it was not until my next job that I realized just how valuable that lesson was to me and my future.
I am the middle child of 5. When I was very young my parents divorced and my mother raised all 5 of us on her own. She struggled at time financially and it was hard on us as a family. She tried to instill in us values such as hard work and respect for authority. …show more content…
The first day she worked with us, she told us that everything we did was wrong and it all had to change. Peg’s personality was very aggressive and she was very loud all the time. For example, when you were having a normal conversation with her she had a tendency to stand extremely close to you and talk at you in a way that sounded like yelling. I have never appreciated this type of person or behavior so when Peg would talk to me I would often become defensive because I felt uncomfortable. It did not take long for us to develop a negative …show more content…
She did this in several ways but the biggest one was in making the work schedule. In my second year at McDonald’s I had graduated high school and started working full time. By the time that Peg arrived at our store, I was working a set schedule with the same days off and I enjoyed my routine. I had weekends off because I visited my husband in Maryland on the weekends, where he was in training, and it was the only time I got to see him. The manager we had before Peg, knew my situation because as I said before my husband worked at McDonald’s before joining the army. Despite trying to explain this to Peg, when she took over making our schedule she started giving me all different days and hours so that the new workers could continue to work their normal schedules. The reason this made me so upset was not because I was unwilling to work weekends but because I felt that we should all compromise a little instead of some us compromising completely. This was only one of the many issues I encountered in my time working with Peg. When I had to work with Peg, I hated it. She was a bully and did everything in her power to make my job miserable. I eventually quit to move but not before enduring months of suffering under her toxic leadership. It wasn’t until I moved to Germany and began working that I realized how much Peg had taught