Work – Five Minute Friday

Oh my goodness. FINALLY getting the chance to post for Five Minute Friday. This was WORK. I’ll get into that in a minute. Learn more about Five Minute Friday and read other’s posts by following links here. In brief it is a little place where we all take five minutes to write from our hearts via a one-word prompt. No editing, no worrying, just enjoy the writing and then visit with your neighbor. 🙂

As I currently do not have internet at home and our local  library closes well after I get out of work, I post typically on Saturday. So really no hard and fast rules. Just give it a shot.

This Friday’s word prompt is WORK.

START

So with the word prompt of WORK, I was not exactly sure where I would go. I decided let’s see what I learned from some of my jobs. Look out this may have to be cut off before five minutes is up.

My first job like so many young woman back in my day or adolescents even was baby sitter. I began baby sitting at age 12. I watched the children of friends of my mom’s from her job as a realtor.  From my job babysitting, I learned that kids are not remotely easy to watch, but if you can make it fun, you can get it done. I hadn’t even seen Mary Poppins and figured this out. What I did was freeze cleaning. The music came on and you cleaned up your mess as fast as possible. The music stops…you freeze. Simple but the kids loved it.

As a server (it was the 80s and 90s), I learned the importance of cleaning as you go (I kind of need to translate that at home more). It was far easier to take care of a table and a station if I took the time as I went, and a customer was quicker to sit down if I was able to grab a glass or two away and not a pile. We will not get into the disgusting cigarettes that also needed to be taken away. Yes, I was a server back when people smoked and ate. ICK.

In all my jobs, I learned the importance of a good attitude and working as if for the Lord. I would push myself to do well and held myself to a standard of improving all the time. There was a time where I was training as a dental records tech. I have a hand tremor so although I could take x-rays, I couldn’t do other things without concern for my tremor so I took a pay cut and worked instead as a sterilization tech. I cleaned up after the assistants and dentists and made sure that everything was full on clean as a whistle and sterile. I worked hard and frankly was grateful to still be working for the dental practice.

One day the head of our practice (there were several offices) came in to work in our office. I had not met him yet. I was busy as always and although wasn’t trying to, I impressed him so much, he brought me up at that evening’s office meeting, and I got a raise! I took on more duties as time went on and made far more than I was initially hired on at when I was doing records. Why? Because I was working for the Lord and working hard and God blessed me. A strong work ethic really can take you a long way. Especially when the owner sees you.

Colossians 3:23 Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, 

Now a little lesson I learned from my mom while driving with her to her job as a realtor. I learned that you can listen to people who do your job and learn to do your job better. This is why I love podcasts today I am absolutely sure. Don’t be afraid to approach someone who does what you want to do and ask if you can learn a few things. Most are happy to share, and you will walk away better for it.

STOP

Well, that is that for today. I really worked a lot of jobs. Some fun, some not so much, but not a minute of it was wasted. I was a medical transcriptionist too. THAT taught me how to type FAST. One of my favorites was when I dressed up as a Care Bear and visited kids in the hospital. One of my least favorites was sorting worms for my parents worm farm. Yep…you read that right. How about you? What was one of your favorite jobs or perhaps not so favorite?