Persistent Pursuit of Perfection Part 3: Remember Where You Came From
In my previous blog, I told a story of how I lost my dear friend Stephanie. This was a momentous event in my life and it changed me abruptly. In this week’s blog, I want to talk about the part time jobs I held that led to small gradual changes and helped shape the person I am today. Regardless of where anyone is or will be in their careers and in their lives, I think it is always important to remember where you came from. It keeps you humble and brings perspective to challenges that people around you may have also faced, or are still facing.
I was just eight years old when I started working in my Dad’s restaurant. It was commonplace to see children of Chinese restaurant owners helping the family business. I worked the front desk answering phone calls and taking orders for customers. At this age, I didn’t think it was work but rather just helping my Dad out. I continued working at my Dad’s restaurant through high school. Once I was in high school, I would work on some Fridays, weekends and in the summer. This is also when I began trying to be as efficient as possible with the front desk and also picked up some of the appetizer station work. I wanted to help in more ways than he would actually let me. Little did I know, this experience would prove invaluable as it developed customer service and phone etiquette skills that would later be the core of my first job out of college.
Once college began, I applied to work-study jobs on campus at UMass Amherst. However, these jobs prioritized students with financial needs based on family income. Needless to say, work-study jobs were always filled with students that met the requirements. With difficulty finding part time work, I focused on developing friendships that I have to this day and fulfilling general education requirements during my first two years of college.
By my sophomore year, I got my drivers license and first car so I could easily go between UMass and home. Growing up in Boston and always having access to the MBTA, I did not prioritize getting a driver’s license until college. Once I got more driving experience, I applied for work at UMass Transit at the beginning of my junior year of college and became a part time bus driver. They helped me get my CDL drivers license and I worked there for the rest of my college career. Despite the campus having over 20,000 students, we employed less than two hundred people, serving the five neighboring universities and their towns. This job kept me busy and even though I envied other students who could do their schoolwork while working in the library or classrooms, I learned how to sharpen my focus on my main responsibilities; academics and bus driving. I thought about my job as bus driver like this, it was my responsibility to get enough rest so that I was always sharp on the road and able to keep my passengers safe. To further complicate this, I drove around the clock, morning shifts that began at six in the morning, afternoon shifts before dinner, and even overnight shifts. But I didn’t miss a beat. I was at the top of my game managing my time between bus driving, studying, and socializing. I knew what my priorities were and I stayed disciplined. Now, with less time on my hands, I was more efficient than ever, grades better than ever.
I continued the momentum even in the summer between my junior and senior year of college. I worked part time at an Enterprise Rent-A-Car as Service Agent. Because I had shifts at UMass Transit where we were responsible for the maintenance of the buses, this didn’t feel much different at all. As a Service Agent at Enterprise, my responsibility was cleaning and prepping cars and picking customers up. It was my goal to provide the rental team with the best looking cars possible and represent the company in the best light when picking customers up. My work ethic resulted to being appreciated and commended by manager who saw the consistency and dedication I put in my work even though I was just there as a part-time employee for one season.
As my colleague career concluded, so did my career as a bus driver. I had a very interesting and strange resume which included working the front desk of a restaurant, volunteering at academic institutions, and a lot of experience in public transportation services. I graduated with a major in Communications, a minor in IT and a minor in Chinese with Cum Laude honors. Uploading my resume to job websites led me to a lot of commercial driving jobs. I looked everywhere for all sorts of jobs that either fit what I studied or my interests. Like Malcolm Gladwell says in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, “Practice isn't the thing you do once you’re good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.” Dealing with irate customers face to face and on the phone, working difficult hours and doing the dirty work that no one else wanted to do with diligence and efficiency is what would set me apart. I put in the hours and practice. I just needed an opportunity to show my work ethic and experience. Little did I know, this opportunity came in the form of an inconspicuous Craigslist posting.
When I look back at my jobs prior to graduating college, I have nothing but fond memories of all of them. They were all very different experiences and taught me different skills that I still use to this day. I had a lot of fun with all of them. Honestly, sometimes I still feel like that little boy behind the counter of the Chinese restaurant, bright eyed and just wanting to impress his father and make customers happy.
