For my 17th birthday, I got my first job at Dairy Queen. Finally one step closer to taking over the world.
- I didn’t want to work full time
- My volunteer experience was a tad bit.. non-existent
- I most brutally sucked at the interview
The summer after, I didn’t learn much from my mistakes. I just applied to more places. I took a clipboard full of resumes around the area, looking for any ever-so desperate strip mall that would be so kind to bother considering paying for my service.
It wasn’t the economy’s fault — definitely not. My friends who cared about getting jobs either had at least *something* in their resume heading that says “Work Experience.” I didn’t even have that heading at all in my unworthy resume. This list of friends who were working included my very sister, who got a job at Kumon when they were still hiring. I had lost my chance now that they’re flooded with employees. Maybe it actually is the economy’s fault?
*Pls save us Justin Trudeau*
At first, it wasn’t all too special to me, other than that it was my very first job. But it slowly dawned upon me that I was to be learning very valuable transferable skills from this unassuming fast food franchise that I may apply to my forethought of world domination. Here are 6 of them:
1. How to Make Food to Feed Your People
Probably the last thing that would come to mind when someone says fast food. When you try to take over the world, naturally, people will oppose you and perchance hunt you down to murder you. If you were stuck by yourself alone in a forest, you’d have to know how to survive.
Okay, I admit that Dairy Queen taught me nothing about surviving in the wilderness, but if I was stuck in a kitchen I’d know how to survive. This dilemma happens more often that it should in my household.
2. How to Clean
It’s Next to Godliness
Definite plus points for an absolute dictator if they know how to clean their slate. A messy society is very indicative of mess in said society. You don’t want that. Man, there’s so many things that need cleaning in the world. The air. The waters. City streets. That lab bench your chem teacher made you clean because you didn’t wear your goggles. Those are just a few examples.
Also, if you know how to clean, you’d be able to help around in the house a little more.
3. Time Can Get Awfully Slow
You think time goes slow in school? Well, since you’re not travelling anywhere near the speed of light, you are most certainly wrong. Working at DQ is like being on a different planet. I sometimes felt, after a long rush of customers or clean up session, that an hour must have passed, only to find that the second hand was the only thing that moved in that cursed wall clock. With this astrophysical phenomenon kept in mind, you’ll learn how to dominate quite a few worlds beyond Earth.
4. Things About Your Subjects Your Customers
These mindless folks dubbed “customers” become easily predictable NPCs once you get some XP in your game. If there’s two customers together and one of them orders fries, you better have two containers worth of fries ready to go because chances are, the other one is getting fries too. It’s mind blowing.
Also, customers don’t like it when you touch their food. Whether they realize that you made that food with your own bare hands a couple seconds ago or not doesn’t matter. You’ll find how easy it is to anticipate those mindless blizzard-craving zombies’ next few moves.
5. Things About Your Coworkers
My coworkers are very much interesting people. Each and every single one of them live very vivid and complex lives. Definitely more complex than your sad and boring life.
And all of us at Dairy Queen, somehow, ended up at the same place. Almost all of us are under 25. Although there is one coworker of mine who has a PhD in Environmental Biology. So yeah she’s not under 25. Another coworker used to be a cook in the country he emigrated from. Another is a multi-instrumental music producer with a home studio I very much covet. Another is a medical technologist and just works at Dairy Queen because making cakes is fun (it is). You can’t meet people in very different walks of life working together just anywhere. Make sure to give your coworkers tax exemptions under your inevitable regime.
6. Things About You.
I didn’t realize how emotional of a person I was. The original plan was to quit DQ once summer break was done. But I couldn’t. It’s not just business. It’s personal. This humble fast food franchise is now a part of me. It it forever will be. Every “good job,” “you’ve improved,” “God bless you,” and “you’ll go far,” meant a lot to me.
I know, eventually, that I would have to move on, just like half a dozen coworkers of mine did. But never shall I lose any of these valuable lessons.
So, this is what Work Experience entails.
Okay, working at a fast food didn’t teach me how to take control of the world. But one thing it taught me is how to take control of my life. Keep one foot out of your comfort zone and you’ll take control of your life. 🙂
