German and History...Now, What Will You Do With That?
I honestly have no idea what I want to do with myself when I am done with my studies. The military would be a tempting option, except for the fact of the difficulty in starting a family.
I have always been fascinated by the law and would love to work with the law...but I do not know whether that would translate into my loving the lawyer profession, and I cannot help but notice that nobody likes lawyers.
The military would be a more tempting route, if I knew what one would have to do in order to be a JAG, which would do quite nicely. This would be a fantastic way of combining two of the things I have always wanted to do. If only I could find a way to pursue it. Plus, I'm yet to hear of people hating on scummy JAGs....
Several of my professors have encouraged me to remain in the academic realm; this would be interesting, but I am not holding out for this. I realize that a large part of getting entry into this field requires pedigree, and pedigree costs a lot of money, so I am thinking that this is unrealistic, barring massive financial aid.
What will I be able to do with my degrees? I intend to be able to research, write, think, and argue well in at least two languages. I intend to be generally well educated and have a mind disciplined to absorb and process information in such a way as to understand and make use of it, and I intend for these arts to be habit. I also hope to have an understanding of the course of human affairs and of humanity as a whole. Um'kay?
Working in my capacity as an exalted sales clerk at JCP has taught me one thing: I absolutely need a job that constitutes a challenge and the full utilization of my mental faculties, and the sooner the better.
I don't suppose there is any kind of intellectually taxing, part-time, employment? In my current job I am a replaceable piece, perhaps one of excellent quality, but still infinitely replaceable. On some of the recent slow days I have had the luxury of examining what I do, the value of what I do, and measuring it against my inflated ideas of what I could potentially be doing. What I do right now could be done by any number of other people, maybe not with so much pizazz, but more than adequately.
The great part of what I do right now is scramble for ways to silence my own critiques of my customers taste and assure them of how right their choices are. I have long since learned that it is useless to try and sway customers into any path other than their own. I essentially help people to feel good about their poor impulse control and encourage them in indulging it further.
I feel that the only time when I am actually useful is the time when I am straightening, and this is most emphatically not the first priority. It is about Customer First service, which includes getting people to buy more stuff than they need or came for and getting them to apply for credit cards. Customer First is the tag they put on anything they want to sound good, whether it is providing the greatest service or no.
I am paid for my time, and it is nice to have the money, but I cannot help feeling that I am wasting my time. The work I do requires little talent and it seldom feels like I have accomplished anything. I guess this is the nature of part time work. There are sales goals, ratings, and credit goals, but I have noticed that the first two are almost exclusively affected by the time of year and stock we have on hand. New stock makes for better numbers. Customer satisfaction is at its very highest when we have a lot of new stock in. As our stock dwindles, our numbers dwindle. The employees remain the same--some good and are some rude--and yet the numbers fluctuate between the 55 and 80%. We do not change the way we serve customers, and some of the highest numbers were during the busiest times.
No one cares how knowledgeable and courteous an employee is if you don't have anything they want. And people are satisfied, in spite of absent employees, when they are able to find the product they want for a reasonable price. I might point to the Macy's at our mall as an example of people paying ridiculous prices for the product they want, in spite of cold and unhelpful employees. My point is: The store has goals, but I have learned that employee impact on those goals is minimal; it is about merchandise. There are no realistic, individual, goals...except credit applications, which I am dead against. The terms of the card are bad and it is way too easy to get, encouraging people with no money to spend more of what they do not have and pay 27.9% interest on it. No way.
As far as departmental numbers go, I have learned that I can go out and work to the best of my ability, and have many people thank me profusely, but the Men's numbers can still end up low for the day if we don't have the merch. This has been really frustrating for me lately as we have been stripped of anything tasteful, and I hardly want to work because I realize that my presence is basically useless. I cannot help the majority of customers because I don't have what they want.
Which leads to another issue. I hate being servile to belligerent people. They come in with this attitude that because they are a customer they are incapable of wrongdoing or pigheadedness, and that however rude and brusque they may be, it is all justified by the fact that they are acting in the defense of their seven dollars of which you are trying to cheat them...and then it turns out that the employee was right, but most managers have no spine and the customer gets the seven dollars anyway and the employee is forced to endure their smug glare.
Once again, belligerence and rudeness are things I can deal with, but are frustrating when combined with a sense that I am accomplishing nothing. If I have to deal with irate and often dishonest people, I would much prefer to at least accomplish something in the process. I am also not paid enough to be talked down to by people of rather questionable hygiene.
I have realized that I am in a slightly better funded position then I was before I took this job, but my position is similar to this summer in the sense that I feel like I am doing nothing.
That is another reason why I do not want to just enter the Military. From what I hear, the vast majority of military jobs include a lot of "doing nothing." And if I do indeed go into the military, I do not want to get stuck "doing nothing." I am capable of whatever I need to be, but my ADD self is not built to twiddle the metaphorical thumbs. I have a mortal fear of boredom and uselessness.
I want a job where I do something challenging that has value. How is that for specificity?
And here I was, dead set on not whining, and it spilled out anyway. It's not like I'm working third shift at a gulag or anything. I blame it all on lack of sunshine.
I have always been fascinated by the law and would love to work with the law...but I do not know whether that would translate into my loving the lawyer profession, and I cannot help but notice that nobody likes lawyers.
The military would be a more tempting route, if I knew what one would have to do in order to be a JAG, which would do quite nicely. This would be a fantastic way of combining two of the things I have always wanted to do. If only I could find a way to pursue it. Plus, I'm yet to hear of people hating on scummy JAGs....
Several of my professors have encouraged me to remain in the academic realm; this would be interesting, but I am not holding out for this. I realize that a large part of getting entry into this field requires pedigree, and pedigree costs a lot of money, so I am thinking that this is unrealistic, barring massive financial aid.
What will I be able to do with my degrees? I intend to be able to research, write, think, and argue well in at least two languages. I intend to be generally well educated and have a mind disciplined to absorb and process information in such a way as to understand and make use of it, and I intend for these arts to be habit. I also hope to have an understanding of the course of human affairs and of humanity as a whole. Um'kay?
Working in my capacity as an exalted sales clerk at JCP has taught me one thing: I absolutely need a job that constitutes a challenge and the full utilization of my mental faculties, and the sooner the better.
I don't suppose there is any kind of intellectually taxing, part-time, employment? In my current job I am a replaceable piece, perhaps one of excellent quality, but still infinitely replaceable. On some of the recent slow days I have had the luxury of examining what I do, the value of what I do, and measuring it against my inflated ideas of what I could potentially be doing. What I do right now could be done by any number of other people, maybe not with so much pizazz, but more than adequately.
The great part of what I do right now is scramble for ways to silence my own critiques of my customers taste and assure them of how right their choices are. I have long since learned that it is useless to try and sway customers into any path other than their own. I essentially help people to feel good about their poor impulse control and encourage them in indulging it further.
I feel that the only time when I am actually useful is the time when I am straightening, and this is most emphatically not the first priority. It is about Customer First service, which includes getting people to buy more stuff than they need or came for and getting them to apply for credit cards. Customer First is the tag they put on anything they want to sound good, whether it is providing the greatest service or no.
I am paid for my time, and it is nice to have the money, but I cannot help feeling that I am wasting my time. The work I do requires little talent and it seldom feels like I have accomplished anything. I guess this is the nature of part time work. There are sales goals, ratings, and credit goals, but I have noticed that the first two are almost exclusively affected by the time of year and stock we have on hand. New stock makes for better numbers. Customer satisfaction is at its very highest when we have a lot of new stock in. As our stock dwindles, our numbers dwindle. The employees remain the same--some good and are some rude--and yet the numbers fluctuate between the 55 and 80%. We do not change the way we serve customers, and some of the highest numbers were during the busiest times.
No one cares how knowledgeable and courteous an employee is if you don't have anything they want. And people are satisfied, in spite of absent employees, when they are able to find the product they want for a reasonable price. I might point to the Macy's at our mall as an example of people paying ridiculous prices for the product they want, in spite of cold and unhelpful employees. My point is: The store has goals, but I have learned that employee impact on those goals is minimal; it is about merchandise. There are no realistic, individual, goals...except credit applications, which I am dead against. The terms of the card are bad and it is way too easy to get, encouraging people with no money to spend more of what they do not have and pay 27.9% interest on it. No way.
As far as departmental numbers go, I have learned that I can go out and work to the best of my ability, and have many people thank me profusely, but the Men's numbers can still end up low for the day if we don't have the merch. This has been really frustrating for me lately as we have been stripped of anything tasteful, and I hardly want to work because I realize that my presence is basically useless. I cannot help the majority of customers because I don't have what they want.
Which leads to another issue. I hate being servile to belligerent people. They come in with this attitude that because they are a customer they are incapable of wrongdoing or pigheadedness, and that however rude and brusque they may be, it is all justified by the fact that they are acting in the defense of their seven dollars of which you are trying to cheat them...and then it turns out that the employee was right, but most managers have no spine and the customer gets the seven dollars anyway and the employee is forced to endure their smug glare.
Once again, belligerence and rudeness are things I can deal with, but are frustrating when combined with a sense that I am accomplishing nothing. If I have to deal with irate and often dishonest people, I would much prefer to at least accomplish something in the process. I am also not paid enough to be talked down to by people of rather questionable hygiene.
I have realized that I am in a slightly better funded position then I was before I took this job, but my position is similar to this summer in the sense that I feel like I am doing nothing.
That is another reason why I do not want to just enter the Military. From what I hear, the vast majority of military jobs include a lot of "doing nothing." And if I do indeed go into the military, I do not want to get stuck "doing nothing." I am capable of whatever I need to be, but my ADD self is not built to twiddle the metaphorical thumbs. I have a mortal fear of boredom and uselessness.
I want a job where I do something challenging that has value. How is that for specificity?
And here I was, dead set on not whining, and it spilled out anyway. It's not like I'm working third shift at a gulag or anything. I blame it all on lack of sunshine.
Health care. But then again, I'm biased because I'm in PT. :)
ReplyDeleteUm'kay.
ReplyDeleteSorry about that. I re-read the relevant paragraphs and realized my brain wasn't actually functioning fully. But then again, there's still being an interpreter for a patient.
ReplyDelete