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Food Fight – December 8, 2007
Ever since I have been in high school I have worked in two different restaurants, Golden Griddle and Smittys. I worked at Golden Griddle for around 4 or 5 years and Smittys for one day...but that’s another story. They were both the same kind of restaurants, they both focused on breakfast, Sundays were their busiest days and they were only 5 minutes away from each other. So why was one more successful then the other? Why did one of them shut down while the other one is still up and running?
Well first lets focus on GG. In my opinion the food at this place was a lot better then Smittys but there were lots of down factors as well. First of all there was really no order at this place. The owner was hardly ever found for the last year it was open and the managers disliked him just as much as its employees did. There was lots of rebellion against him since he would always find corners to save a couple dollars. The corner cutting might have saved him a couple dollars here and there but it eventually led for him to lose respect by the people he was trying to order around. He wouldn’t allow eating in the kitchen and although he would never say anything if he caught you there still was that hidden tension. The owner would frequently break his promises and take money from peoples checks. Other than cooks and waitresses the majority of people working there were teenagers. So what eventually happened to this place? One morning the owner called all the employees telling them not to come in this weekend since the restaurant was renovating for 2 weeks. It never re-opened.
When I started working at Smittys, the first hour I was shocked. Their kitchen was a lot smaller than Golden Griddles. It had a dishwasher half the size and its cooking area was quarter of the size. So why is this place still up and running? Well first of all the employees seemed very happy. It was very normal for the dishwasher to come up and ask the cooks to make him something to eat. Even though the owner was hardly ever around, his sister was around all the time and she did just as much dirty work as the rest of the employees. The wages were generally high; on my first and only day there they paid me just as much as the GG cook who had been working there for around 8 years. There was also order in the kitchen. Majority of people working there were adults and they have certain places where certain things go, where at GG you put the stuff where you find free room. What also shocked me is how much knowledge they had about GG. The Smittys cooks knew who the cooks were at GG, they knew who the owner was, who the manager was, what the specialties were on what days while in the 4-5 years working at GG I never heard anybody mention Smittys.
So in the end we have two restaurants, one that’s still up and running while the other one failed. I believe that there are two reasons for the failure, lack of organization and lack of respect. By cutting corners and trying to save a couple cents you don’t accomplish anything, in the end there are bitter feelings and loss of respect. By being lazy and isolating yourself from the employees you leave room for them to conspire and hit you where it hurts the most. By not connecting with the employees and find a common ground between you two, you bring in the us vs. him mentality which eventually causes
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The Ball Is In Your Court – December 5, 2007
The other day I was thinking about the future and it scared the living crap out of me. I kept asking myself questions that scared me shitless; What if I don’t graduate from University? What if I work in a dead end low wage job for the rest of my life? Then I realized one little fact, how I end up in the future all matters on what I do now. Right now I am controlling the ship of my own destiny and if I end up a fuck up in 10,20,30 years from now its my own fault right now.
You don’t want to be regretting things when you become older and wishing for another chance. It reminds me of an episode of South Park when the adults hired people to pretend they are their son/daughter from the future coming to the past so the kids don’t mess around when they are young. Look at the directing you are heading now and tell me would your future-self be able to call you now and tell you “great job, I love what we managed to accomplish” or “wow bud, we really screwed up eh?” Well the ball is in your court now.
Pema Chodron a Buddhist nun said this. “Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we're going to be more cheerful in the future, it's because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.”
See what kind of person you want yourself to be later on in your lifetime and work on that right now. The key is to know where you are going before you start, and get moving one step at a time.
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The Best Thing In Life – November 19, 2007
The best thing in your life comes suddenly and unexpectedly. It often comes out as some form of a tragedy, well it seems that way at first. It’s that thing that comes into your life and you ask yourself questions like what did I do to deserve this? Why me? You also complain about it, cry about it and think it is possibly the worst thing in your life. In my opinion the reason for that is that us humans are not used to that sudden change. We like to live life in a safe routine bubble where we know what will happen the next day and the day after that and the day after that.
Looking back in my lifetime there were a couple experiences where at the time I would cry about, bitch about, get angry over and finally now I realized those were nothing. When my “girlfriend” and I broke up for good, I thought it was the worst thing in my life but now I see that breakup was necessary and it should have happened a lot sooner. When I moved into a new city and went to a new school I thought the situation couldn’t possibly get worst and that my life was over. Now when I look back at it, if I haven’t moved there I probably would have been a high school dropout drug addict.
It’s like a “fight club moment” and Ryan Holiday does a great job explaining this (http://www.ryanholiday.net/archives/fight_club_moments.phtml). We as people need to sink to rock bottom to be able to do anything and that rock bottom WILL be the best thing that ever happened to you in your life. You may not realize it now, you may not realize it in a week but there will be a point in your lifetime when you get that light bulb moment and say to yourself “that was the best thing that happened in my life.”
The key to realize it sooner is as Robert Greene says to see things as they are and not tainted by emotion. When you are in that situation when you think the worlds crashing down on you, see the situation for itself and not through your perception. Know how to deal with it and focus on how that situation will better your life. When one door closes another one opens.
"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."
-Tyler Durden
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Society or self? – November 10, 2007
The other day I was wondering do people do things that they do because they actually want to, or because of social pressure? I believe there are two types of people, the first type who will fulfill their own needs based on their own needs and the second type is because they want to be seen look good in front of others. Do you go to school every day because you actually want to learn something new and stimulate your mind, or because your parents tell you to?
I believe that the first type of people who actually do what they want to live their life generally happier then the majority of the society they will live with passion and have direction where they want to go. The second type would be the one that will be all over the place, who will buy shiny toys so they look good and live their life unfulfilled and never find the true sense of self. If you live every day of your life trying to look good and please others how are you supposed to be self-fulfilled?
To be self- fulfilled I believe that you need to know what you want, be aware of your strengths and weaknesses, be internally happy and wake up every morning wondering how you will make yourself a better person that day. People who are influenced by others and live day in and day out trying to look good for the crowd are puppets, whose happiness comes externally. One of the ways to get a good idea (notice I say good idea instead of know) which type you are is by asking yourself ‘how do I know if I did a good job?’ If you need others to tell you that you did a good job then you tend to be more society influenced but if you, yourself know that the work you did was great because you spent lots of your time and energy then you tend to be more internally influenced.
Overall it is true that society and social pressure affects everybody, hence sociology (the study of society) and that’s the reason why I want to switch my major to sociology but to be truly fulfilled you need to do what you want first then put social pressure next.
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