While many equate a Saturday morning at the Jersey Shore with relaxation, donuts, bike rides, and cool summer breezes, mine tend to go a little differently. 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning in Avalon, New Jersey, means for me a sweat-soaked T-shirt, a butter-stained apron, a crew of kitchen staff berating me for taking the omelette with cheddar cheese instead of American cheese, and a wave of hungry vacationers demanding sugar-free syrup and eggs “cooked over-medium, but still a little runny when I dip my toast in them.”
Yup, you guessed it: I’m a waitress. And no, I am not writing this to air my grievances about the perils of waitressing (which, to be clear, are plentiful). This is instead an offer of appreciation for the multitude of indispensable skills with which working in the service industry has provided me. As many of us prepare to enter the workforce, the more life skills we can add to our repository, the better…even if these skills develop from dropping an entire tray of eggs benedict on yourself, and having to make a speedy recovery. (Yes, that did happen to me.)
Here’s an example of a hypothetical waitressing scenario and how the skills learned therein could be applicable in a professional setting: Imagine you are serving five tables of customers at once. Three of these have their food already, one needs ketchup, another needs water refills, and a third wants their meal to be re-made to their exact specifications. At the same time, you still need to get to your new table to take their order, and the kitchen is telling you to pick up your food for your fifth table. You’ll need to access the following skills:
Time management
The ability to juggle the needs of five tables at once can be applied when juggling the demands of several assignments from a future boss. The time management skills learned in this scenario will become useful when your boss requests three tasks to be completed before a 5:00 deadline.
Prioritization
In this situation, you have to decide what’s most pressing: the needs of the tables who just got their food, the table who hasn’t been addressed yet, or the food in the overcrowded kitchen window that needs to be dropped off before it gets cold. Similarly, in a work setting, not everything can be done at once. You have to begin with the most important tasks first, and then proceed from there.
Attention to detail
Habits such as making sure food comes out the way it was ordered, noticing when tables have empty glasses, and providing extra napkins to tables full of children can often prevent you from being put in a stressful scenario in the first place. In professional work, being detail-oriented pays great dividends and lessens the chances of making errors.
Communication
The benefits from being a skilled communicator both in the workplace and in daily life cannot be overstated. Apologizing to customers, offering ways to make up for your mistakes, or explaining that the kitchen is backed up are some small exchanges that can go a long way.
Patience
Granted, sometimes people just suck. No matter how great of a waitress you are, some customers will always be disrespectful or cranky and give you a hard time. The same goes for the workplace. Whether with co-workers, employers, or clients, not every interaction will be a walk in the park. What other people do is out of your control, but how you choose to respond is totally up to you. Patience pays off.
Waitressing is just one example; there are plenty of other service jobs out there that can benefit college students in the long run. So if you’re looking for some extra cash this semester, consider taking a job in the service industry and you may end up learning more life lessons than you have in your entire college career.