From the floor to the founding
Introduction
Last semester, I made the (somewhat regrettable) decision to enroll in a standardized career readiness course at my university. In this class, I was told – as I had heard many times before – that experience working in the service industry would prepare me well for a “real” job down the line. I took my first service job the summer after my sophomore year of high school, freshly of legal working age but otherwise entirely unprepared for those months I would spend behind the counter selling donuts at a local Dunkin’. Subsequently, I have worked six other jobs, including the one from which I am writing this currently. My time working in various positions in the food & beverage industry developed and bettered me in a number of ways, but I am not sure that I would include preparedness for my role at GenZen amongst them.
Things That Did Not Translate
Some of these are admittedly more intuitive than others, but I am of the belief that all are worth including, as they fundamentally underlie many of the behavioral shifts that are necessary in the transition from one type of job to another.
Feedback Loops: In both realms, whether it was an intermediary authority (shift manager, mid-level supervisor), a “higher-up” authority (boss, manager, owner, CEO, etc.), or both, there was at least one person I was always reporting to. However, I use the term “reporting” quite loosely as it relates to the service industry because, as I am sure many of my former coworkers would concur, no manager needs to know everything. Last summer, at a hotel rooftop, the other hostesses and I spent the entire summer letting our manager believe that we ceremonially stood at the host stand for the two hours every night wherein the bar was open seating and nobody needed guidance anywhere. As the other managers (who we reported to in our manager’s absence) and we agreed, arguing with him would have been unenjoyable and fruitless – we got on just fine letting him think we were following his (illogical) guidelines. At GenZen, we are a team of three. Despite my boss having another job, he is about as present as any manager can be, we spend an hour or two meeting every day to review, analyze, and strategize (as well as just talk!). Though there have been miscommunications and things that flew under the radar, eventually everything has come up.
Operational Awareness: I have often heard proprioception (awareness of your body in space) be referred to as the “sixth sense” of sorts. Well, whether you are behind a register, a host stand, a bar, a counter, or any other form of guest/worker divider – you’ll need to develop a seventh. At any moment, you need to be able to account for where every person is, what they are doing, and where they will go next. At Dunkin’ and Jimmy Johns’, this meant always having an eye on the line and the bright LED screen that clearly communicated who was preparing things on time, and who was not. At the restaurant, this meant carrying around a walkie-talkie at all times so that six hosts spread across three floors knew who was holding the line, sending people up, kicking people out, and, of course, what the servers/bussers/kitchen/managers were doing during all of this concert of chaos. At my desk, I can work for hours at a time with little to no information as to what my coworker or supervisor is working on, with remarkably insignificant influence as to my order of operations. While this does help me focus on one thing at a time, it also makes me feel less attune to the rhythm of the workplace writ-large (though the absence of constant beeps is fortuitous!)
Procedural Guidelines: What are you supposed to do when a guest wants a food order modified, a specific area, or space to seat a large party? Obviously, this depends on the company. It does not, however, depend on the person (at least not in a well-functioning company). There are policies and procedures to follow, values to prioritize, and clear directions as well as consequences for deviation. If I, as a teenager, was well-versed in those procedures is another question, but they certainly were recorded at some point, and there was somebody who knew them (once upon a time). Working for GenZen, I don’t have any of these things. It's not that they are inaccessible, but rather that they do not exist. This is our first time doing this, we are the ones actively codifying things like “How to use Notion,” or “How to find things to write about for blog posts” – good luck future interns on that one!
Task-Allocation: When a customer approaches you, they are asking you for something (whether that be explicitly or implicitly). Most of the time, it is really clear what they want – even if it is also often impossible, e.g. “Can I skip the two-hour wait and just go first” or “Can I have this refresher (made from concentrate) sugar-free?” Though in this situation, I still end up with some dissatisfied customers, at least in those cases, I know what they want — and why I can’t give it to them. In my work with GenZen, I’m often unsure who the “customer” even is, let alone how to meet their expectations. Working for a start-up means psychologically acting as both the customer and the creator, trying to anticipate the desires on one end and manufacture the solutions on the other.
The Overlap Worth Noting
No matter where you are or what you are doing, something will go wrong. There will come a time (usually about a couple weeks in), where you are expected to clean up the mess – sometimes literally. This requires the ability to think quickly on your feet, assess a situation and what it may require. More importantly, though, it requires you to be accountable for the action you decide to, or not to, take. Of all the service industry takeaways, this blend of urgency and personal responsibility may be the most enduringly useful — in work and in life. I believe this is the type of thing people mean when they say that the skills you gain there will be to your benefit in a professional career.
Conclusion
Though I spent the majority of this article detailing the ways in which my roles in service decidedly differ from my role at GenZen, none of this was to in any way devalue the work myself and others have done in jobs like that. Quite the opposite, in fact. They taught me quick-thinking skills, discipline, grit, and much more. That said, the environment and the dynamics at play within those jobs is entirely unreplicable. To tell young people otherwise can be misleading. The oft-called “soft skills,” one learns from them are skills that you can pick up doing a great deal of things: being a conscientious student, a summer camper, a sibling, a volunteer, a teacher, the list goes on. The value add of these activities is similar. The transferable value of a starter job doesn’t come from it simply being ‘a job’ — wherein you are paid to perform a task. It comes from the larger effort of showing up, caring, and navigating the world thoughtfully, something you can learn in countless other ways, not just ones that involve filling out a W-2.
About the author
If you were wondering who wrote our blog today, her name is Alexandra! She has been working as a summer intern since June. She has one more month left in Ireland and is excited to enter her junior year studying Philosophy, Psychology, and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A fun fact about her is that she loves Diet Coke & iced coffee, especially when consumed on audiobook-supported long walks. Click on our Instagram posts below to see more of her work!
