I went to Dairy Queen the other day. It was a slow part of the evening, after the rush had left where the people remaining might have been thinking about closing, but it was certainly too early to begin any of those procedures. As such, there was a small group of their employees talking to each other. I was greeted upon arriving, but since I headed directly for the cakes, they gave me space to look through the cases at my leisure. After a couple of minutes, I found my cake in question and walked it up to the counter. The conversation was continuing and while my person was trying to pull away in her body language to tend to me, the rest of the group was not letting her go so easily, even as the group started dispersing.
As such, her first words to me were "Sorry about that."
I replied with "No worries, I know what that's like." I've worked fast food and retail--I've had coworkers that wanted to continue on our conversation and found it difficult to politely extract myself so that I could take an order, offer assistance, etc. I wasn't upset in the slightest.
What she said next though, confused me: "It's just Dairy Queen--I don't take it seriously anyway."
I did not have a reply to that. I just felt uncomfortable. I know that she was trying to brush off her own embarrassment, but her self-depreciating statement about her job was at the least a little gauche.
Naturally, the whole way home, I was thinking about what I should have said. Here's the best that I came up with.
Firstly, I reject the idea that "it's just Dairy Queen." As a society, we expect these services to be available. What would happen if all fast-food and similar service industries stopped? Along that vein, I will also group other kinds of "undesirable" jobs. Garbage collectors as another example have an un-glamorous job, too, yet leaving all of that garbage around is gross, unsanitary, and down-right dangerous. Driving a truck may not be the job you hear bragged about at your high school reunion, but we rely on goods being delivered and available on time. These are important parts of our current world. That means that we need people to work those jobs. These workers are an important part of our society that we take for granted. They deserve to be treated with respect. These people should also receive a living wage--I do not accept the idea that people in these very necessary jobs "deserve" to be poor.
Additionally, if we presume that she was not taking it seriously because it was a first job or a part-time job for spending money, even if it only temporary, the experience is still worthwhile. Working in some kind of service industry, too, is important to build that empathy--it is inevitable that you will run into some kind of service industry on a routine basis, whether that is Comcast, your insurance company, or a last minute lunch. And it is a good skill to learn how to serve and care for other people, building empathy in that capacity as well.
The best comeback that I came up with, though, was "you should always take your job seriously; you should never take yourself too seriously." Even if the job didn't mean much to her, she should still be present in it. All jobs are worth doing well. However, we should have a sense of humor about ourselves. That's how we can laugh at ourselves when we spill milkshake down our front and allow that one particularly cranky customer to roll off our back. It keeps you grounded and purposed and yet allows room for fun.
Any other thoughts out there?
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