I was picking up a rental car the other day and saw that the company (Enterprise) were advertising an entry-level job. And I felt an odd desire to apply for the position. I don't need a job and Enterprise is most probably looking for someone in their twenties and not a guy in the autumn of his career. What drove it was a nostalgia for work in the service industry.
Like most people my age, I started my work life with a number of jobs in the service industry in my late teens and early twenties. I liked the work as much as I liked school, which is to say I liked it quite a bit when I had a good boss and hated it when I had a bad one. But those jobs turned out to be incredibly important to my working life.
For starters, I learned more at those jobs than I ever did at school. Almost every worthwhile career skill I have I learned in the service industry. Skills that sound simple but aren't such as how to talk to a customer on the phone. How to place a cold call. How to deal with a disgruntled customer who is right to be disgruntled. How to deal with a disgruntled customer who is just a jerk.
I learned that customer relations are more important than how well you actually do the work. No, I'm not saying that the quality of service or products doesn't matter. But it won't matter how good your service or product is if you have bad customer relations.
I learned firsthand about the uselessness of unions. Yes, I know, they did lots of things in the past, but I worked in three union shops, two of which became unionized while I was working, and all three were a disaster. Unions are antithetical to good service industry practice.
Not unrelated to the above, one of the things you can really see on the job in the service industry is who is going to make it and who is not. This is particularly true when you work with university students and recent university graduates. You see a lot of really smart people who could thrive in the academic world who just don't have it. I my case that person was me who just didn't have it was me and I had to make some serious changes to my attitude and appearance.
I also learned how to be laid off and how to quit. (It's amazing how many people don't know how to quit.)
But when I look at people I know entering the job market for the first time today, one of the things they all have in common is their disdain for the service industry. They want their jobs to be more ... well, I'm not sure what they want.
A big part of the problem is university and the anti-capitalist, anti-middle class values they teach. Worse is the false status that university conveys on graduates. Once upon a time, a university degree was something really special and a sign of achievement. It's little more than glorified high school now.
But another part of it is that people have lost any sense of how rewarding a good service-industry job is. That is a big part of why I felt the tug when I saw the sign at the Enterprise office. I deal with these people fairly often and it's a good company. If you were just starting out, you could learn a lot from these guys. They aren't the only ones.
Like most people my age, I started my work life with a number of jobs in the service industry in my late teens and early twenties. I liked the work as much as I liked school, which is to say I liked it quite a bit when I had a good boss and hated it when I had a bad one. But those jobs turned out to be incredibly important to my working life.
For starters, I learned more at those jobs than I ever did at school. Almost every worthwhile career skill I have I learned in the service industry. Skills that sound simple but aren't such as how to talk to a customer on the phone. How to place a cold call. How to deal with a disgruntled customer who is right to be disgruntled. How to deal with a disgruntled customer who is just a jerk.
I learned that customer relations are more important than how well you actually do the work. No, I'm not saying that the quality of service or products doesn't matter. But it won't matter how good your service or product is if you have bad customer relations.
I learned firsthand about the uselessness of unions. Yes, I know, they did lots of things in the past, but I worked in three union shops, two of which became unionized while I was working, and all three were a disaster. Unions are antithetical to good service industry practice.
Not unrelated to the above, one of the things you can really see on the job in the service industry is who is going to make it and who is not. This is particularly true when you work with university students and recent university graduates. You see a lot of really smart people who could thrive in the academic world who just don't have it. I my case that person was me who just didn't have it was me and I had to make some serious changes to my attitude and appearance.
I also learned how to be laid off and how to quit. (It's amazing how many people don't know how to quit.)
But when I look at people I know entering the job market for the first time today, one of the things they all have in common is their disdain for the service industry. They want their jobs to be more ... well, I'm not sure what they want.
A big part of the problem is university and the anti-capitalist, anti-middle class values they teach. Worse is the false status that university conveys on graduates. Once upon a time, a university degree was something really special and a sign of achievement. It's little more than glorified high school now.
But another part of it is that people have lost any sense of how rewarding a good service-industry job is. That is a big part of why I felt the tug when I saw the sign at the Enterprise office. I deal with these people fairly often and it's a good company. If you were just starting out, you could learn a lot from these guys. They aren't the only ones.
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