Good Morning!

This morning I’d like to talk a little bit about aspirations.

When I was going through high school, I thought I knew exactly the job I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was going to be a paramedic, and nothing would stop me from helping people. Then I took a healthcare course at school and we got to meet a real live paramedic!

Needless to say I was floored to be able to meet and talk with a paramedic and ask him just how cool his job was!

The paramedic we talked to told us he loved his job, but it wasn’t for everyone. He went on to explain some of the things he’s seen and experienced in his line of work and my stomach turned.

Turns out I wasn’t really the type to deal with the kind of things paramedics deal with on a daily basis. Not to mention the hours are less than desirable.

Once I graduated high school, I was completely lost. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with my life and ended up taking a job at McDonalds to pass the time until I made up my mind.

After working a number of years in customer service, I realized that I really enjoyed working with people but the customer service industry has a fairly low earning cap (on average).

A lot of customer service jobs pay minimum wage and seldom lead to anything more than another job in customer service. This really frustrates me, as I feel the people on the front lines keeping customers happy are the people that deserve to be compensated the best. Sometimes they get yelled at and treated like dirt, which is becoming more and more common for people in the customer service industry.

The problem with the customer service industry now is that the people who take the minimum wage jobs are people who could care less about their jobs. Don’t get me wrong, there are a ton of unsung heroes in the customer service industry, however on average they are few and far between.

In my opinion I think the customer service industry needs a little bit of a shake up. Employers need to start recognizing their employees for keeping customers happy and ensuring that the business succeeds.

A lot of huge corporations will say they have employee recognition programs, however they are nothing more than a popularity contest. If you’re buddy buddy with your manager, then your odds just improved! They typically have absolutely nothing to do with the actual work you do.

The ones who typically get it right are small businesses. I’ve worked for quite a few small businesses in my time on this planet, and I feel like they know more about proper compensation and employee recognition than anyone.

I’m much happier working for a business where the owner or manager knows you by name, and doesn’t have to look at a personnel file to figure out what kind of employee you are.

The problem with huge businesses is that everyone is a number, and everyone is replaceable. Your HR person will look at your file, read the notes on it, and make a decision based on what they read and not what they know about you as a worker. This opens you up to all kinds of corruption and favoritism.

This sort of turned into a rant, but the question I wanted to ask in all of this is “In a perfect world where you had to work, what kind of work would you like to do? If money was the same across all jobs, what would you want to be doing?”.

Leave a comment and let me know! I’m very curious to see the answers I get.