Working is More than a Paycheck

By: Emily Jellison

Imagine you’re walking into the kitchen of a restaurant. You immediately smell the dish soap, sanitizer, Windex and Febreze. You fasten your bag on a hook and immediately discover voices nearing the manager’s office. It’s the people you work with every day, except they’re all gathered together in sight of a difficulty. Everyone has rallied as a team to search of a cause and solution. Nonetheless, it took everyone to come to a conclusion on how to address the problem first hand.

Over the summer, I worked as a hostess at Applebees in a small town, Corsicana, Texas. If you have ever worked in a restaurant before, you know the industry is unpredictable, swift and sometimes stressful. There is always something that needs to be fixed, handled or checked in on. In spite of this, I love talking about my experience and the values I have obtained.

When one works a job, we are expected to do our one placement. What students fail to realize is working is so much more then your skills but your ability to learn and work with others. In this industry, the strategy of communication came to be one of my most valuable skills. I had to use the principles and tactics from my past coursework in my public relations classes. Above all else, problem solving was the biggest contender when it came to working. Majority of our managers and employees time was taken up on solving problems. The issue was never the problem, it was the person’s perspective of the problem.

As I go into my second semester of RaiderComm, I have learned that working is so much more then a job. It is an opportunity. It is an opportunity to look beyond your duties and serve your teammates, customers and yourself. Never be afraid of new experiences and the tools you will learn. Those skills a classroom could never teach you.