Guest blog on how you learn values from a part time job

Money was the only motive.  It was the one thing I intended to gain from enduring 6-hour shifts on summer nights at my local Olive Garden™️. At that point, I thought I had my life pretty figured out: good grades, great friends, a clean reputation as an approachable and modest guy who could roll with the crowd, activities that I pursued passionately, and an ability to focus in high pressure situations.  I just needed some spending money.

And then I actually started bussing tables and realized that my outlook was like a soggy breadstick—not technically wrong, but falling so short of the profound reality of the warm, velvety firmness of a fresh breadstick.  I got a lot more than money from my job.  I know, it doesn't sound that enlightening to work at the fine-dining establishment of, well, Olive Garden, but I'll express to you what the boss-man told me: "This ain't no teeny-bopper summer job scooping ice cream!  This is the real deal, baby: Olive Garden, we're an $8 billion company!"  And I must confess, being on the very professional OG Busser Team 3 changed how I viewed high-stakes performance and my own successes.

I thought I knew what humility was.  I didn't.  Humility isn't being really good at something and not talking about it.  Humility isn't being modest or feeling uncomfortable when someone touts your accomplishments for you.  Humility isn't reminding yourself that you are only one person, one regular guy.  What truly humbled me was walking in to my job and finding myself to be the least skilled, the least efficient, the least valuable.  That was foreign to me.  I am often a strong performer in a class, or one of the better musicians in a band; even with sports, I might not have been among the best on every team I’ve played on, but I certainly was not the worst.  Admittedly, I was a rookie busser, but that didn't change the simple truth: I was the worst.  Adapting to that meant completely changing my mindset.  In the beginning, I had to concede that I was the one who needed help and was weakest—and then transform myself from the weak link into a dependable teammate.

I thought I knew what it meant to be so focused, so driven, so desperate to succeed with every fiber of your being... and then clutching it out as if by fate.  I've poured out all the verbal virtuosity I could muster onto an 8.5x11-inch paper in one night; I've radiated laserbeams of concentration with my fingers flying across the keys of my saxophone and my brain 100% locked in; I've summoned every iota of energy on the field or the track in championships. But going to work made me realize that I still knew nothing about delivering under high pressure.  The achievements that are important to me are important - but not as important as the check that the single-mother bartender, Lenaya, is depending on to feed her kids, nor as important as the tip that the waiter at Table 106, James, urgently needs to pay his rent on time, nor the bonus that the 57-year-old busser, Antonios, is so ardently toiling for to pay his daughter's legal expenses for immigration.  The stakes are higher than any championship.  I'd volunteered at soup kitchens and witnessed struggling people right before my eyes, but external views alone don't truly allow single motherhood, rent deadlines, and other real issues to be more than abstract concepts. 

I came to the understanding that the survival of the teammates to my left and right was partially dependent on me, and that made those problems not necessarily more real, but more personal.  Their worries became things that weighed ever so slightly upon me, too, and that's how I gained some empathy, not just sympathy.  The desire to gain my coworkers' respect and trust motivated me more than a biweekly check. I never would've felt that kind of motivation if I "rolled with the crowd" and scooped ice cream with a gaggle of other teenagers.  Olive Garden gave me more than just a paycheck; it added new depth to my values.