Service

In our culture we put certain professions on pedestals, the professions we believe deserve respect and admiration. Usually it's Firemen, Police Officers, or EMTs, the people who's day job it is to save lives. But these are not the people I want to talk about today, and I'm not saying they don't deserve the praise they get, they deserve all of it and more. No today I want to talk about people who not only don't get the praise they deserve, they very rarely get any praise whatsoever...

The Service Industry...

Retail workers, fast food jockeys, clerks, waiters, tech support. These are the people who get paid as little as is allowed in this country, and yet deal with so much. Their job? To make you happy... They make your food, package your groceries, get you your entertainment through movies, games, and books. And when their company does something that upsets you, they're the ones that you yell and scream at... And they just have to take it.

These people are literally at the bottom rung, usually in their early to mid-twenties, college students who are already under extreme amounts of stress getting their lives started. They have to worry about a place to live, bills, and transportation on under ten bucks an hour, and then have to put on a smile while they pour your coffee. A constant juggling act of keeping the customers pleased, while making their store profit.

And that's not an easy job, I can assure you. People have this idea that a company that wants to make money is evil, that when a policy changes it's unfair and they're being ripped off. They think they are personally being attacked when actually a company is just trying to stay afloat in a difficult economic time. That policy that was being taken advantage of, that was losing the company money, had to be changed. When this happens and you feel personally attacked, it's that poor guy or girl at the register that's going to have to deal with the rage.

And let me tell you, that clerk is just as annoyed at the policy change as you are, possibly more so.

So think about this the next time you walk into a supermarket, or an electronics store... That guy who's wearing the uncomfortable polo shirt with the nametag on it? He's not the company he works for, he's just a kid who's trying to pay for school, a cell phone, his car, and possibly an apartment on 35 hours a week. Maybe screaming at him that the price of your favorite kind of bubblegum went up five cents isn't really going to help his day out any. Maybe instead we should all appreciate these unsung heroes that do for us something we have long since taken for granted.

He's a clerk, and he deserves respect.