I recently started up at another part-time job as waiter at a teriyaki restaurant. While I've worked in food service before, this is my first time both as a waiter and at someplace that is neither a cafe nor a fast food joint. Everything's going really well, except for the fact that I come up with extra on the register when closing out every evening because I, a college graduate in his mid-twenties, can't friggen' count. As a matter of fact, things are going well enough that my awesome boss has decided to train me in the kitchen.
This came up sort of out of the blue. We found ourselves conversing (a bit brokenly, as she's a Peruvian immigrant and the extent of my non-English linguistic skills is Terrible Pidgin French) during a lull at work and it came to light that she's looking for someone to train in the kitchens, aside from her two current cooks, so that she doesn't have to work seven days a week. Genius that I am, I immediately volunteered. Hey, it's more hours! And maybe even not in nine-hour blocks on Sundays!
I'll let you know when we can train you, Awesome Boss said. It'll probably be a weekday, after your newspaper route, she told me. Well, last Sunday, she asked if I could come in on Thursday evening and I blithely agreed. This would be easy! I've been watching what goes on in the kitchen ever since I started working there, I'm a pretty smart guy, sure there's a language barrier but Awesome Boss and the cooks are smart folks too and we'll do fiiiiiiiiiiine.
Wednesday morning, I woke up with ice in my veins, stared blindly up at the ceiling, and whispered in something more akin to a death rattle than a voice, "I'm gonna screw this up and she'll fire me." So far as irrational terrors go, this was a fairly sensible one. I get kind of stupid when I'm nervous and, for various reasons I won't go into here in the interest of not publicly airing dirty laundry, female authority figures of a maternal age make me really nervous.
Even so, as Best Friend quite reasonably pointed out, at absolute worst I'd have to find another job, which I'm looking for anyway as the ol' Multiple Part-Time Jobs thing, while interesting, gets pretty tiring. Far more likely, even if things went badly, Awesome Boss would just decide to keep me on waitstaff and get someone in the kitchens who can make sushi without vivisecting himself.
Such eloquent and logical response should have left me speechless, but no. Not me. I had an immediate response, a resounding and impeccable defence of my panic.
I'm gonna screw this up and she'll fire me! I'd cut my thumb off. Or I'd cut someone else's thumb off. Or something would burst into flames and it would be my fault, or somehow I'd poison a customer even though we don't serve anything even remotely venomous, or...
...or it would go absolutely fine and dandy. Which is what happened. Yeah, I screwed up a little, but, oddly enough, this didn't particularly bother me - I think I've officially clued into the fact that if someone's impatient, it's not always personal, but rather, frequently, because they're busy, because they're frustrated with a communication gap, because they've had a long day - in short, because of their own stuff, not mine.
This strikes me as a really important thing to learn about being an adult, namely that nobody really cares. What they care about is getting their own requirements cared for, and that you aren't a jerk. They don't give a damn what you're wearing or what music you listen to or, really, even if you screw up a bit, so long as you aren't obstreperous about it and learn from your mistakes. It's pretty awesome. And it's okay, people mess up. This stuff happens.
In part, I'm writing this in hopes of it sticking in my own mind. That sort of worry, the I'm gonna screw it up and something awful will happen, does no one any good. Find all the information you can on what you're doing; figure out what's relevant and remember it; do your best; listen to those who do know what they're doing; learn from what you (and others) do wrong, and you've done your part. All that's left is for others to do theirs.
It's okay. You're seldom as screwed as you think you are.
Ever since you wrote this, I've been thinking. you've a habit, of inspiring thought in me. I can't quite say, at this moment, whether it's been good or bad - but it's gotten me to thinking of my own rather poor handling of worry.
ReplyDeleteIt's that last sentence that keeps tripping for me: Seldom as screwed as I think I am. So... Thank you, for inspiring the thought. It's helped a lot, this past week, since I've been doing a rather lovely round of hospital visits. (I'm fine. It's other people.)