Five Work Concepts I Learned in My First Job

Originally published in Linked In on November 14, 2016.

The office setting, business meetings, coffee in the desk or emails are far from what was my initial job experience. My first work took place in a fast food when I was 16 years old. I joined the workforce using an apron and a hat. This first work was 25 minutes away from my home in the municipality of Humacao, Puerto Rico. My title at that time was Customer Service Representative for which I earned $4.25/hr. back in 2001.

I started in May 2001, while in high school. My main responsibilities included: taking orders, serve orders, replenish supplies, assist cooks, assist delivery and maintain clean the general dining area. I learned the fundamentals for work at a Kentucky Fried Chicken® Restaurant. I worked here for almost two years.

This first experience served me to learn the basics for work and helped me learn how to act in the workplace. This was a very nice contact with the workforce while attending school. I still remember my first day there.

These are five lessons I learned from there:

1.      Punctuality – Be on time to work. Of course we are humans and things happen. And is for that reason that you need to be known as a punctual person. Let the lateness be the exception. People are counting on you, the team (you are member of) is counting on you, and your boss is counting on you. I consider myself a punctual person. When I started working I wanted to show the manager and my colleagues that regardless my age I was a punctual person. This says a lot about you and how much you care about work.

2.      Diversity – For the first time I was working with grownups with no intermediary. All with different backgrounds, views of life, work styles, frustrations and goals. In a normal day (easy day), you probably could not see our differences since we acted calmly and there was no need to project our inner selves. But when we hit the rush hours you could pick all the diversity that was around us. I learned to respect it, embrace it, and enjoy how stress put the team to the test. I learned the term diversity later but I knew from my grandfather that we are all different and that we need to work with that.

3.      Teamwork – What a stressful time were the rush hours: open time, lunch time, dinner time and close time. Everybody went to help, to clear the line, to serve the clients quickly and to see the counter clean. We assisted others when we could to be ready for the rush times. I can remember how good it felt when we cleared the line. The sense of accomplishment when the kitchen was set up ahead of time, when the areas were supplied or when we just served the order from the front. And the result was happy customers!

4.      Responsibility – “We all know this one” or at least we want to understand it. What I mean with this one is that if I made a mistake I had to face the consequences. I was teenager, but I would not look good if I called my parents for something I did. And yes, things happened to me there. Clients not satisfied with my service, clients not satisfied with the food, clients mad because of the waiting time, a misunderstanding or just an argument with a coworker. I faced all these situations, learned to solve them politely and avoided to get fired. Like any other mature person, I came to work as usual like nothing happened.

5.      Efficiency – This was my first shot at improving operations. I teamed up with a senior coworker that always wanted to improve things but no one wanted to support her. First intent was to talk to the store manager to start early on weekends to be able to have more time for the restaurant set up. Second move was asking to have one more person to do the set up. As a result we moved from half hour set up with one employee to an hour set up with two employees. Results were instantly noticed. Usually we were delayed at opening time and suddenly ended waiting for the customer to enter the restaurant. Besides starting early we created systems to set up for the day and to run the shift. This systems allowed us to create our own backups for the rush hours.

Working in this place was a very enriching experience. I still enjoy the memories from there and all the lessons it taught me. I would always be grateful for the general manager who mired me. Remember that punctuality, diversity, teamwork, responsibility and efficiency will always need be part of what we are in our jobs.

What about you? What lessons you learned in your first job?