The thing about working is that it does not matter what kind of job it is, it is why you're doing it that matters. Some people just need money, like me,or support their families. A job is a job, no matter what education you had or have not had.
Mirabelli defined service jobs as, "any kind of work which fundamentally involves face-to-face
or voice-to-voice interactions and conscious manipulation of self-presentation." (pg.144) That is pretty much any job, unless it is an office job that makes you sit on a computer all day long. Every job requires some kind of interaction with another human being and what makes each job different are wages/salary.
Wages are one of the main things why people degrade regular service jobs that do not require a degree. If you are making only minimum wage at a burger shop, for example, the instant judging happens and people do not realize that you chose to get that job at your current age.
Another thing is that people sometimes take it more seriously than you do and there's no really point because you could always find a better job if you wanted to. Skills that were learnt in that job will continue to be with you to the next job or benefit you in your life.
Take Starbucks baristas for example. They probably know how to make a bunch of drinks at home without even having to pay Starbucks pricing. It takes a lot of skill to remember how to make a bunch of drinks and for me, they do contribute a lot to society because they help me stay up all night if I need to for an assignment. The coffee drinks they make probably help everyone wake up in the morning a lot, even the people who believe that low paying jobs are low-skilled.
I also work at these "low skilled jobs," as a cashier at Home Depot. It actually took a lot of effort because I had to learn new terms and figure where some things are, especially when some random customer brings me an item without a bar code. I had to know where everything is on the register and on top of that quickly ring up a customer, while having a huge line behind them.
So no matter what kind of job it is, it does not matter because you learn something from their every time. For me, it was being a bit more social, outgoing, and more brave to go do something random.
I agree! It is up to the server to memorize all of the item and know what's in them, where to find them, and how a customer can personalize them. I remember asking a friend who worked at a grocery store questions about it and I was SOO surprised to find out that they had to memorize the codes to ALL of the fruits and vegetables from the produce department - not to mention being able to differentiate organic from non organic and know wheat the heck some of them were called. It's simply amazing how much a customer standing on the other side of the register, or counter, doesn't see behind their order.
ReplyDelete-Meghann Vallecillo
Hi Lisset!
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with everything you said. I found it so so sad when people degrade or judge another person for holding a lower-salary job. They're regular people just like everyone else with bills to pay, student loans to pay off, and sometimes even kids to provide for. It should be enough that they're even working, no matter what their job is, in order to be able to put food on the table. Jobs are jobs no matter what, and you make a great point about how some people are just way too quick to judge just because of the difference in salaries.
- Julianna Duque