I think that this post is interesting but in large part romanticizes something that is very brutally simple: the question that most employers (and not just in catering) and many patrons ask is just "How much do you need your job?" If the answer is "I really do", the consequence is simply "Then eat the shit sandwich".
If the answer is "I don't really need it" most employers will simply ask themselves "How can I get more people who really do need that job?" and think about third world immigrants usually, or start ranting about the "welfare queens" and the "strapping young bucks" living it large on government money paid for by their taxes.
Ric, this is a disturbing post. You're in a bad place right now, and I'm not sure what I'll be able to do to help you. Please feel free to reach out.
It's been a strange morning. I was reading a Harvard Business Review article about how the role of the middle manager was evolving in a workforce working an asynchronous work day while the office is becoming a virtual structure, and I actually laughed out loud. Not one of the people he was discussing ever actually made anything. a fact he completely missed. It was evident that he had talked to a lot of experts, all of whom looked like him, he read their reports using the same language he used, and the thought hit me, not one of these guys could actually make hamburger and get it to a customer. Then I read your account and I thought perhaps you were reading my mind.
You have a skill and can make something, I'm not sure many of us can say that. My family spends an extraordinary time around hospitals and attached physician offices, and my wife has taught me to greet and thank the invisible people - the cleaning crew, the food service workers, the wheel chair attendants - without whom nothing would ever actually get done. The man who helped my wife get me a wheelchair, then took and parked our car, the pleasant woman who allowed a wheel chair to exit the elevator, then continued holding the door so my wife could get me in. My wife has taught me that I owe expressions of gratitude to invisible people; I always knew that without them the world would grind to a halt. I hope I'm not the only one who read that in what you wrote.
I think that this post is interesting but in large part romanticizes something that is very brutally simple: the question that most employers (and not just in catering) and many patrons ask is just "How much do you need your job?" If the answer is "I really do", the consequence is simply "Then eat the shit sandwich".
If the answer is "I don't really need it" most employers will simply ask themselves "How can I get more people who really do need that job?" and think about third world immigrants usually, or start ranting about the "welfare queens" and the "strapping young bucks" living it large on government money paid for by their taxes.
It's really not complicated.
Ric, this is a disturbing post. You're in a bad place right now, and I'm not sure what I'll be able to do to help you. Please feel free to reach out.
It's been a strange morning. I was reading a Harvard Business Review article about how the role of the middle manager was evolving in a workforce working an asynchronous work day while the office is becoming a virtual structure, and I actually laughed out loud. Not one of the people he was discussing ever actually made anything. a fact he completely missed. It was evident that he had talked to a lot of experts, all of whom looked like him, he read their reports using the same language he used, and the thought hit me, not one of these guys could actually make hamburger and get it to a customer. Then I read your account and I thought perhaps you were reading my mind.
You have a skill and can make something, I'm not sure many of us can say that. My family spends an extraordinary time around hospitals and attached physician offices, and my wife has taught me to greet and thank the invisible people - the cleaning crew, the food service workers, the wheel chair attendants - without whom nothing would ever actually get done. The man who helped my wife get me a wheelchair, then took and parked our car, the pleasant woman who allowed a wheel chair to exit the elevator, then continued holding the door so my wife could get me in. My wife has taught me that I owe expressions of gratitude to invisible people; I always knew that without them the world would grind to a halt. I hope I'm not the only one who read that in what you wrote.