What I Didn't Realize About Service Professions

As I prepared to graduate college, I was pretty sure I wanted to go into a service profession of some kind.  After working at the writing center, I knew I greatly enjoyed working with people and feeling that I had helped someone.  (Sometimes, this took on a warm, fuzzy, I'm-glad-to-have-helped you kind of feeling when students thanked me; sometimes it was more of an I-helped-you-dang-it-whether-you-like-it-or-not kind of feeling)

 

So Human Resources seemed like a good fit for me.  It involves helping people, doing some writing, and knowing the people who surround me on a daily basis.  What I didn't realize when I started this paper is that once you start a job--an 8 to 5, take-up-the-bulk-of-your-days, define-how-tired-you-are-when-you-get-home, rather-large-chunk-of-your-life-and-time kind of job--people expect certain things of you during that large chunk of your life if you've elected to be in a profession that serves them.

 

To be specific, the employees you work with expect you to be happy.  All. The. Time.  They want you to be wreathed in smiles, whistling as you work, name any happiness cliche you can think of . . . they want you to be the sunshine on their shoulder, members of KC and the Sunshine band, erstwhile stand-ins for Santa and his elves . . . they want you to be turning cartwheels, tap dancing if they deign to talk to you, delighting in any and all menial interactions with them.  You think I'm exaggerating, but let me illustrate:

 

One of our employees came in to my office yesterday, proceeded to call me "Catty" instead of properly pronouncing my name like a normal human being, and commenced making himself annoying for no purpose.  For twenty minutes.  I ignored him, except when he started whining about how I disliked him.  That I ignored him at all was to my credit, because I could have bit his head off much earlier than I did.

 

Finally, using my proper name, he said, "Katie, you're cranky.  Isn't it part of your job description to be happy and nice?  I'm going to talk to your boss."  My boss, glad someone finally told this heinously annoying employee off, told him it was not part of my job description, and he walked away from her office disappointed.

 

I thought of this as I waited in line for a cranky cashier to scan my items at Target last night; from now on, I will fault nobody their crankiness.  Everybody has as much right to being cranky as they do to anything else in this world.  So maybe some customers need to soften their expectations to account for outside disappointments, stressors, and frustrations: mean customers, bad family situations, PMS . . .