Growing up in a tourist town you usually enter your first job at like 12. In Aspen it's all hands on deck as the seasons light up.
My very first job was working at the Playhouse Theater in Aspen Colorado at the age of 12. When you grow up in a tourist town, you learn early on about the service industry. I shuttled folks from condos to the airport, was a dishwasher at a local restaurant, and helped the older locals with their bags of groceries for tips.
The World of Tips! What I learned was that if you relied on tips, you needed to impress and show how well you were working, and folks with friendly personalities usually did best. This was the first time that I saw how you treat others can be a direct link to how they treat you. At times working in the service industry you feel like your life belongs to them. While that might seem true, you do have the opportunity to change the winds, which is why personality is key here. The service industry is a place where assholes need not apply.
I remember when I first came to Portland one of my first jobs was an outdoor waiter at the River Place Hotel. This was the first time they were doing outdoor table service on the Willamette River bike path. I got the job because of my tourist experiences from growing up in Aspen. What I was not prepared for was the onslaught of international Rose Festival goers.
We had about 20 tables with over 200 folks sitting and standing along the bike path, all wanting drinks and food. As a server, my first response was to keep folks calm, so while the kitchen was backed up with real food I would get a few tables some quick snacks like cheese nachos, the only item I could get on the house to help sooth hungry customers. Turns out those tables bought pitcher after pitcher of margaritas and tipped very well. What I learned was not that freebees are a waste but that the right give away may entice the sale of larger more pricey items.
The truth is, if you work in the service industries it is more about how well you can think on your feet. The lunch or dinner rush becomes that wave attacked by a surfer, how well you hang on to your wits is a show of whether or not you can handle it. There is no personal issue; it is really all about handling pressure, which for me as a kid came from summer jobs because I did not want to panhandle from my parents to go to a concert or the pinball palace.
Later on as I began to run our boutique animation studio Happy Trails Animation in Portland Oregon, those firing lines became deadlines set by clients and studios. Nothing like a holiday special or a fan piece, that had to be out the end of the week while studio execs still bantered about changes until the day before it was supposed to air. The service industry is not just about food and hotels. I had to rely on those early job experiences for what became big studio in-house marketing projects. The issue with studios is no one wants to put their neck on the line and since you are the service provider of animation, it’s not over ‘til it’s over.
A key to enjoying any service industry gig is that you need to enjoy problem solving with a little bit of hot-potato pressure, almost like whack-a-mole. To be quite honest, no matter where the service industries might exist, the only folks that stand out are the connectors, and self-aware, that can survive and make it under pressure. Although when you are in the trenches it seems like it’s all about them when in really it is more about how well you manage: round peg... square hole, in under a second. There will always be things that come up and you just need to be willing to get your hands dirty.
I know that college is a necessity but the experience I got when I was 12 at that theater, or running the Islin Burger stand gave me the social skills I needed for life. I feel that a service job for any high schooler can best prepare them for today and beyond college. In fact I feel some parents are actually holding their kids back.
Service jobs really give you an eye into culture and what is going on in that industry. The kind of knowledge and experience you can only get by doing it. Let the service industry help you be a better person. The #1 rule that was said in Aspen, those that made it will be your best customers, those that inherited it… the worst. (and that was at 12.) The trick to service jobs is finding the motion of the ocean and riding that wave. I feel that riding that wave is very important to how you ride into your future. Be brave and serve.
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