Saturday, July 31, 2010

Things I've Learned

Here are some things I've learned along my journeys in the working world:

- a boss of mine, a restaurant owner, speaking of customers: "It's not enough for them to like you, they have to love you." What he meant is that it's only restaurants that people love that they go back to again and again, and bring their friends, and have birthdays and anniversaries... merely liking a place isn't good enough when you're competing for discretionary spending.

- the trick to remembering something (and I've always had a good memory, but as a waitress I took orders for two, then four, then six, then twelve people without writing anything down) is preparing a place in your mind for the information before you receive it. You have to take a split second to create the receptacle, so to speak, where you're going to store the information, and then place it there in your mind.

- I had another boss who redefined "boss" for me. I had always had bosses who told me how to do the work. She admitted she didn't know how to do my work, and she saw her role as being there to make sure I had what I needed, to remove obstacles, to provide support. She was a fantastic boss.

- in a phone room, I learned that if I'm looking at a word written out, and then it's pronounced aloud very differently than how it looks, I always struggle to pronounce it, even though someone JUST told me how. The trick to pronouncing it correctly (like a complicated name) is to stop reading it, and just listen to it. This is hard for me because I'm a reader, and my mind keeps wanting to put sounds to the syllables, but it gets in the way. Turn off the eyes and turn on the ears.

- a teacher in art school pointed out that all the feedback you receive is biased toward the tastes, education, and culture of the person who is giving it. There are people who (like me) like high-contrast compositions, so I'm always going to like that more, or give feedback to increase the contrast. But that's just what I like. There are clients who won't be happy with anything except the vision they've come to you with, no matter how good or creative your original designs are.

- another lesson from the restaurant industry: it's tempting to ascribe attributes to a person, or to interpret their behavior toward you, when those things are, in fact, highly fluid and generally have nothing to do with you. For example, I waited on hundreds of people who were just awful people when they sat down at my table. And it's tempting to think that they are like that, and to brace yourself for a difficult time working for them, or wonder what you did wrong. But an awful lot of the time, those people are just hungry, and low blood sugar messes with your personality. Give them some bread, and suddenly they are relaxed and pleasant. Likewise, there are some people who seem so nice and genial when they're full and have had a few glasses of wine, when they are, in fact, terrible people. Distance yourself from someone's behavior (which is different than their personality), since it's very often based on things that have nothing to do with you. This is helpful when they are swearing at you and calling you names.

It's funny, I think that in every industry I learned something that I carry with me into all my future work. But I can't think of anything more tonight that lends itself to these little nuggets. I'll probably have more eventually.