Despite the limited amount of interactions I've had with other people, I still couldn't help but notice varying amounts of quality of work. MJ and I have lived for the last 4 years in apartment buildings and got to know the employees who work at the buildings we lived in; it's pretty noticeable which employees really seemed to care about us, and which ones just brushed us off or made it seem like a chore to deal with us. In the first apartment we lived in, there was a very bubbly African American lady who worked at the front desk, greeted us all the time and remembered our names, and gave us a smile every time we walked by. That doesn't seem like that tough a thing to do, but it's surprisingly how some people who work in the customer service/customer interaction business do not get the memo on that basic premise. They look up, see us walk by, and don't acknowledge our presence or go back to what they were doing, just getting by with the bare minimum, and not bothering to act nice. Guess what? We as the customers notice! And remember, especially during the panic when my social interactions are few but the ones that do happen stick out and stay with me. It may be a reflection of our society that the lowest paying jobs are the ones that deal with the most people and are the most visible, like restaurant workers, apartment building workers, Uber drivers, low hourly service industry workers. The higher the income of workers, the less they have to deal with the masses or at least limit their interactions to only other higher income workers or high-society people, or only need to deal with more exclusive groups.
Which is why MJ is going to be a good nurse, one of those jobs that requires lots of human interactions.......because she is very nice. (We have a poster in our apartment that says "Be Nice" with a rainbow stripe on it. She treats all people nicely, whether it be nurses, doctors, or most importantly patients, even though she doesn't have to be, and even though not all nurses are. Yesterday I went to a blood donation and the nurse who drew my blood seemed to not want to talk to me, often talking over me to a fellow nurse as if I wasn't there. This happens frequently at many stores I go to, often in the checkout line, where a worker will continue talking to his or her colleague despite attending to me as a customer, which I don't mind as much but still a little put off with, but I'd expect a little more interactino and engagement with the nurse who is sticking a needle in my arm. MJ has a nice routine of talking through the process she will do when she's giving out flu shots (she even got some good feedback from patients) , which she practiced on me, and it did work to soothe and distract me from the inevitable prick of the needle.....this nurse didn't really seem to give a darn (like Rhett Butler to my Scarlett O'Hara) and barely responded to my questions about donating blood during the pandemic; it was like pulling teeth, and I was the one whose proverbial teeth (blood) was getting pulled!
The more jobs that I work and the more I see other people doing their jobs, the more I realize not everyody cares that much about whether they're doing a good job or not and just going through the motions of the process. I've been there before too, especially poring over long contracts and documents or memorandums, there's deefinitely a tendency to slack off, no one can be on 100% of the time. But I can honeslty say on jobs where I met with people most of the time (camp counselor, grocery store bagger, volunteering at an art clinic as a bartender) I was always engaged with other people, didn't treat poeple with disrespect or ignorance......that seems like the minimum I can do, and something I can take pride in.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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