Workplace Life Lessons

Justine Danielle Roy
Jroy1
Example Essay
5/18/11
Life Lessons in the Work Place What do you think about when you think work? People often think of long hours, tedious tasks, complaining customers, and moody bosses. Although some of these aspects may be true, the work field can teach you some very important life lessons. Learning these lessons in early adolescents will prepare you for the ups and downs of the work experience. These lessons will help you prepare yourself for future careers. Responsibility is one of the most important lessons you will ever learn in the workplace. By being a responsible person you earn trust, respect, and loyalty. If you are a responsible employee in the work place, you will succeed
in anything you do. You will take pride in the work you do for your employer. Being responsible at work helps you learn to be responsible as an adult. This lesson helped mold me into the kind of employee I want to be in my career. When I was sixteen years old, I was not very responsible. I got a job and had to learn to be a good, responsible employee. When I was eighteen years old, I got a job at a restaurant as a server. I worked very hard and started becoming more responsible with my duties. By the time I was nineteen, I was promoted to a position in management at this same restaurant. Another lesson you will learn in the work field is self discipline.
Self discipline plays a very important role in being a good employee. When you learn self discipline, you learn how to be a dependable employee. Without this characteristic you will not go very far in the work industry. When you become disciplined, your time management skills improve. If you are not on time to work it shows that you do not take your job very seriously. It looks like your job is not a priority to you. You always want to show your employer that you take your job very seriously. When you care a lot about the work you do and your job performance, you sometimes have to plan your personal time around your work schedule. When I became a manager at my job I had to learn to be much more disciplined, and schedule school and personal time around my work. I work, and go to school full time. I have to schedule my time very wisely. Discipline also helps you become more professional. It helps you learn to control your personal emotions in the work place. Even if you have had a bad day, you have to walk through the doors at your work with a smile on your face. Being polite and helpful to your customers, and respectful and courteous to your co-workers is your number one
priority. In the work industry it is very important to be able to interact with other people. In most jobs, you have to interact with many different people throughout your day. Learning to work and communicate with different types of people will help improve your work experience. We all have to work with people we don’t necessarily enjoy being around. We all have to experience rude customers, or annoying co-workers. This lesson teaches you to be mature and professional in the work place. When I was first promoted to a management position, there was another manager that worked there that I didn’t care too much for. We didn’t get along when I was an employee, and I knew we weren’t going to get along working side by side with each other; No one knew how I really felt about her. When we were both in the restaurant, I was respectful, polite, and mature about the situation. I had to deal with disrespectful, lazy employees, but I learned how to deal with them in a professional manner. This was not an easy lesson to learn, but I did. Another issue I ran into was friendship versus work. For a year I had worked side by side with all of the employees there, and had become pretty close friends with most of them. Having to reprimand or be stern with them was very hard for me in the beginning. I had to cut off all ties with them outside of work. It is against the rules for anyone in a higher rank to involve themselves with people in lower positions outside of work. It was a very hard thing for me to get used to, but I had to do it to keep the position and move up in my work. Being in the work field can teach you some very important life lessons. These lessons can help you in the work world and in every day adult life. Some people think that teenagers should not work. I encourage adolescents to have jobs. Having a job at a young age prepares them for what is to come in future work places. I had an employee once tell me that he didn’t try very hard at work because that wasn’t what he wanted to do forever. I told him that every job he has, and the way he performs, reflects on anything he wanted to do in the future. The jobs you have now, even though they may not be ideal, molds you into the employee you need to be when you have a career. I feel that when you have a job, working even gives you motivation to do well in school and get a good career, especially if you are doing something you don’t want to do for the rest of your life. When young people work I think it keeps them out of trouble, and teaches them to be responsible, and how to be an adult. A lot of very good lessons and life skills can be taught in the work field today. I am very thankful for my job. I feel that it played an important role in sculpting the adult that I am today.