Spartan Daily

Life lessons in part-time jobs

Nina Tabios is a Spartan Daily staff writer.

I never had a job in high school.

I applied at your typical high school part-time jobs, whether it was in retail or fast food restaurants, but I never got that call back.

It seems that I was under-qualified to fold clothes or flip burgers, but somehow in college I managed to meet the qualifications to make smoothies for the Student Union.

I wake up at the crack of dawn to walk through cold and darkness to open the store and prepare to serve grumpy, grouchy people trying to get breakfast before their morning classes.

Fighting through exhaustion, sleepiness and irritability, it is part of my job to put on a face of gusto and guile to serve these people.

The job isn’t made easier when some customers come up to the register and don’t look at me as they bark their order.

It doesn’t make the job easier when I bring them their order and they snatch it up without saying, “thank you” or even a measly “you too,” as I wish them a good day.

I’m supposed to invite them back to the store, but when people act like that I don’t want them to come back.

I love the job — I really do — but sometimes rude customers and lack of simple manners makes me despise it  sometimes.

There was one occasion when I was working the register, and a guy handed me his debit card to pay for his order.

I swiped his card but was it declined and after I tried a few more times, it still wouldn’t accept, so I handed it back to him and apologized that it wasn’t working and that he had to pay for it some other way.

Whether he just had a huge ego about his money, or he just was having a bad morning — I don’t know — but somehow his card being declined set something off.

He snapped at me, saying that he had over two grand in his account and that there was no way in hell that his card would be declined, that there was something wrong with my machine or that I simply didn’t know what I was doing.

Even after bringing my manager over to handle this guy, his card still didn’t work so he proceeded to pay for his drink and snapped a snarky “thanks” when he picked it up.

Now don’t get me wrong, not all people I serve are this way, but I find that most folks fall victim to grouchy-morning-person syndrome and I, more often than not, am on the receiving end to the side-effects of said syndrome as a service person.

It would be easy for me to just succumb to these people’s moodiness and let it ruin my day or, as my dad put it, to not give in and still remain perky, almost as a means to backfire on grouchy-morning-person syndrome.

Working a service job has not just provided me with work experience, but has built an appreciation of all those in entry-level part-time jobs and how being polite goes a long way.

So now, I try to shake off the rude people I encounter daily and, as cliché as it sounds, smile through it all and just go about my shift with the gusto and guile required of me.

And when I’m on the customer end of a transaction, I make the extra effort to look workers in the eye, say thanks loud and clear so they hear me and wish them a good day because I know how it feels to be on the service side of the counter.

I learned that you can’t let minute things ruin your day, but take what good you can and just appreciate it for what it is.

Working at a part-time job has taught me how to deal with and understand people's moods.