WHY HELLOO DURRR c:
This semester is flying by so fast... It's greatttt! I hope you all are doing okay or great in terms of homework, midterms, grades in general.
Hmmmm. Work, specifically service jobs. Are they mindless jobs.. Do people that work service jobs lack the necessary education to be knowledgable workers??
OF COURSE NOT. Well at least in my opinion.. if that matters. I feel like regardless of what type of job it is you're going to learn something, you're going to use what you've learned and apply it to other jobs outside of your job, nothing is mindless and everything you do requires you to think.
To me the people that are degrading service jobs are people that have degrees or have jobs that are significantly higher paying. Wage plays a big role in judgement.
Let's take being a waiter or waitress for example. You have to learn how to take orders, speak to customers, give excellent customer service, critically think when solving problems i.e. when a customer is unhappy or when you run out of something. There is a lot more to serving people than repetitive actions.
If you told a software engineer to be a waiter for a day that person would have to listen, learn, and observe. It won't come to them naturally because it isn't a mindless job. Just like any other job you have to learn and adapt. It may not be knowledge that you gain from going to college but never the less it's knowledge.
Education is acquiring skills, values, reasoning, judgement and the list goes on. Waiters and waitresses or anyone working any service job learns these things. They learn it in relation to their field of work. The things they learn and find useful may not be useful to someone that's working as an architect or a pharmacy technician but it's again still KNOWLEDGE.
I don't know if anything I said made sense. To be honest when I read my writing, in any scenario, I feel like it sounds good, like there are minor tweaks but it's overall OK... but then i get feedback and it's like damn I suck. LOL It's okay one day I'll learn to love writing. Hopefully.. or not.
These blogs doeee... I kind of like them. But i feel like I've taken advantage of the fact that I can freely speak in my own voice and disregard grammer, spelling, details, and basically literacy that I've taken this form of writing into my Op-ed and Memoir and probably my ethnography. Which is tragically ripping me apart. oops.
Lol i say i feel a lot. haha Just waiting for someone to comment on my blog saying NO ONE CARES ABOUT HOW YOU FEEL hahahah. okay imma go now.
Hey Brenda!
ReplyDeleteI agree that that any job should not be seen as mindless work no matter how high level or low level someone may think it is. Like with your waiter example. They do often have to think to solve a problem with a customer and quickly! They don't have a day to fix their errors like a programmer might get, they need to fix it NOW! Or else they'll feel it in their lack of tips :( and no one wants that! You made a good point that every job gives some type of knowledge. Labor jobs give knowledge too, like one first has to learn how to dig the correct sized hole then learn to pore concrete then learn to set the post at the perfect angle to build a proper fence! Key word: LEARN. I thought of this because we recent got our fence replaced haha. Good post!
--Victoria
Hi Brenda!
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you. Blogs are super cool but also making my writing for the class feel super informal too lol. But I definitely agree! I liked your example of placing a software engineer in the shoes of a waitress for a day. It would be so foreign to them, and odds are they would struggle with it. Being waitress involves being on your feet all day - memorizing orders, keeping customers happy, and taking care of any problems that arise!
See you in class,
Karishma Sharma
Hey Brenda, another nice blog post :)
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to add that I agree with what you said about putting someone like a software engineer in the shoes of a service worker. Sure, it may seem like a simple job, but it is something that you are trained to do, and something you become good at, just like any other job. I was talking to my supervisor the other day and she reminded me that many jobs have skills that can translate over to other jobs, even of the previous job seemed to be useless or unskillful. For example, did you know that 911/Emergency phone line operators are usually recruited from fast-food restaurants? They value the ability to quickly relay info accurately and without hesitation. It's something that you would only pick up if you were a drive though operator, a job that many view as unskillful.
-Anthony
Hey Brenda!
ReplyDeleteLiterally everything you have mention is pretty true! There is a lot of new skills that are learned in new jobs, especially being a waitress, and those skills always stick with you. Also, anyone can learn them no matter what education they have had and the fact that you are learning how to do a job shows that they are skillful. It gets me upset when someone calls a job unskilled because a person is always learning, others just make assumptions based on the title of your job, and no one actually knows your mental capability to learn.
-Lisset Perales