Pride
For all of the wonderful stories of craft and competence, I see hundreds of examples of incompetence. One of the local supermarkets employs a special-needs young man as a bagger, and it is a pleasure to watch him decide which items should go in first so as to not crush the bread or crack the eggs. At another market where we shop, JoAnn has to supervise the bagging for fear we’ll have our fruit bruised before we get to the car. On one occasion, JoAnn had to leave the store to take a phone call, and I watched a young girl load four of our bags without once looking down, because she was busy discussing her boyfriend with the cashier. I don’t believe she will ever be happy with any job, and if she marries her boyfriend, he should probably learn to cook and clean house, because she’ll be busy texting her friends about how she’d rather be doing something else.
Take pride in your work. Do your best. Get better. Take classes, go to seminars, and attend conventions. Be competent for your clients. Do what you love, but more important, love what you do. The work can be the reward, and when you let that happen, the work can make you proud.
Get Clients First: The Two Word Miracle now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
