Whether a waitress at a restaurant or a cashier at Panera, everyone can agree that working in food has both its challenges and its great moments. I myself, having experience in both food and retail have had my fair share of....unique encounters, particularly in food. While both of those jobs taught me important things about life, I never learned more than I did than from my job in the food industry. In this world, where most teenagers and even adults began their working lives in food, I believe these lessons are universal from job to job.
1. The customer is(n't) always right.
Sometimes the customer is not right at all. Sometimes the customer is very wrong. Yet, as the lowly cashier or crew member, you are in no position to tell them that. Not every customer is going to be a wonderful ray of sunshine, especially not in food. That is when it is most important to be patient and display a genuine professional attitude to the customer. In life, no lesson has ever been more important than that of patience, especially when someone is wrong. However, I do not attribute this patience to my time in school, or from my family, but from my job.
2. Your mood doesn't matter when you are working.
No matter how you may be feeling on a particular day, you have to exercise a particular skill which I learned as " the grin it and bear it". Your problems aren't nearly as important as the problems your customers may be facing, and any slight hint of agitation or "sass" will cause a customer to utter the dreaded words any employee hates hearing, "Let me speak to your manager". The bottom line is that both of these lessons go hand in hand, patience is essential when working a job in food or just being the world in general. In your career, in college or even in your family, you are going to come across people who test your patience, yet it is imperative that you are to keep that calm that you learned by working in food.
3. Respect for others in your position.
After knowing what it feels like to have someone come into your restaurant 30 minutes before you are about to close, I can personally say that I would never set foot in a place that is close to closing for that exact reason. From my three years in working in food, I have gained a sense of respect for those who are in my place. I get it, and I sympathize with it. The long shifts of having the deal with people whose sandwich wasn't hot enough or whose sandwich was too hot as well as the physical strain that involves working a restaurant job, it sucks and I feel your pain. I have nothing but the utmost respect for those who cash me out when I get fast food with my friends or family or for my waitress when I eat out with those same people because I have been and will most likely still be in their tattered and food covered shoes for a long time.
4. Food safety and cleanliness are a thing....a very important thing.
It wasn't until I started working in food that I started to appreciate the importance of food safety, really just safety in general. That's not really a lesson that comes easily for those who haven't worked in food. However, once I realized the different methods to keeping a store clean and safe, there was no going back. I can't help it when I go into a restaurant and immediately judge the crap out of it for its cleanliness (or lack of). Regardless of that, I am forever grateful to my time in food to have taught me this valuable life skill.
5. In order to work in food, you have to relinquish some of your pride.
Perhaps the most difficult lesson there was for me to learn from my time in food (and it's still a lesson that I am learning) is that you have learn to rely on people. The crew you work with is a team and in a team there needs to be sacrifices made and duties placed on people. While I would love to run the restaurant by myself at times, I had learn the hard way that in order to get things done the way they need to be done, I needed to rely on the help of others. It's a blow to your pride at first, but in the end it is totally worth it when you and the crew you work with are able to completely close down a restaurant in less than 30 minutes.
I label these the top five most important lessons I learned from food business. Along with that come other things that I learned that don't really require much explanation.
6. Prayer cards do not count as a tip, please don't tip your waitress in prayer cards.
7. Making a little extra effort to get to know the regulars in your store goes a long way.
8. The pay is low at times, and living paycheck to paycheck really stinks, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
9. A clean grill is a happy grill.
10. Putting wet floor signs on the floors is so important at the end of the night.
11. Mistake food is the best kind of food. Unless it's raw (don't under-cook your steaks people).
12. Watch out for sinks, you never know when they can attack you and give you a concussion (believe me this has happened).
13. At the end of the day, especially after a busy and stressful day, youu have to remind yourself that "Your just making subs".
14. We are family
The people you work with share a special bond with you that is never going away. From the time that you work there, you form a special family. People may come and go from that family as people move on to other jobs or to college, but the bond of working the same job always lasts and the family still remains the same.
