It's been a month, only a month but I've learned so much. Most people think waitressing is a brainless job, a job in which people do when they can't study well; but I beg to differ. It's not a brainless job, or a job that has "nothing-much-to-learn", no doubt the job includes a lot of manual labor but I've learned a fair deal about the people I work with, the management and building my character.
Having some working experience previously while doing my internships in the hotel, I've witness people treating Banglas, Nepalese and Burmese as second class citizens. As if they weren't worth our time and we shouldn't be "associating" ourselves with them, so most of the time, these people were just greeted with a polite smile and that's it. Working at Peruvie, I got the opportunity to work along side Nepalese, Burmese and Filipinos and it was a wonderful experience. Getting to know these people as people was an eye opening experience. So many times we overlook them because these were the people who does all the jobs we Malaysians don't want to do or known for their cheap labor; but if we open our sepet eyes, they are humans just as we are, who also has needs but are born into undesirable circumstances and due to that, deprived of opportunity as well. During the 1 month, I got to know my colleagues personally. How far they traveled, their nieces and nephews, their families, their own business back home and I thought to myself, they lead such interesting lives. They have a farm!! With pigs, goats, cows, chickens and everything. I got to know about their culture, and how they were so surprised that I'm not married yet at this age, most of them got married when they were 20, and they can't get a divorce or they will be look down upon. It's also interesting to know that half a month's salary in Malaysia could feed their families for 3 months! And so I joked that they would be millionaires when they return home one day ;) I have a sort of admiration for them, here they earn a mere RM 1,600 a month and yet it's enough to sustain them, and yet here I am complaining that RM 2,000 isn't enough to do anything at all...it all boils down to priorities I guess and so it thought me to think of how I'm spending my money and my priorities and to think of the many people living in the city with meager salaries and yet still needing to support families. It taught me to be grateful with what I have and that my family do not depend on me to put food on the table but in fact it's the other way round. These colleagues of mine, though they do not have much in possessions, but they have a BIG heart and they show their love and kindness in their own little ways. For example, they would leave aside a small bowl of food for me just in case the food was finished by the time I come in for work; or would reserve the body part of the fish for me as according to him, girls shouldn't be eating fish heads coz apparently it's bad for pregnancy. (Staff meals served there are usually of the useless parts of fish, basically meals there are very simple. Rice and egg/ rice and fried fish thats it.) The little thoughts count and I was touched by that small act of kindness that they showed me. It taught me that giving, no matter how small can bring a tremendous effect on the receiver.
This experience also thought me a lot about integrity. They are many tricks that the F&B people do to unsuspecting customers, and it has taught me to guard my heart and to know the intentions behind my actions.So many times, I caught myself doing things simply just because I want to go home fast and so many times my conscience would get the better of me and make known to me who I owe my KPI to so that I do my job whole heartedly. So yea, it's this constant awareness that I go through each day that builds my character. I should probably share this. I was naughty one day, I decided to steal a tip that the guest left behind (we were suppose to put tips in a box so that at the end of the month, it gets distributed to everybody, but unfortunately everybody does not include part-timers) so since tips only goes to full-timers, I thought what the heck, why should I work so hard and they get all the tips? So unfair! and so I put the RM 1 inside my pocket instead of the box. I worked through the night and when it was time to go home, I reached into my pocket and realized that the money is gone. That right there was a like literal slap across my face and the lesson came in a form of a RM 1 note. "money is the root of all evil" and it taught me that if I steal RM 1 today, I would steal RM 5 the next, and I would get so greedy about money that God knows what I'll do, so it taught me to earn my keep and what is not meant to be ours, let it be.
Lessons can be found everywhere and anywhere, and it's up to us if we want to pick it up. You can place a person in a place where there is "so much to learn" but if he/she refuses to take the lesson then what is there to learn? So waitressing is not a brainless job where there is nothing to learn, the question is more: Are you willing to learn?
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