Nine to Five
Internships are overrated.
By definition, the gig is often a few unpaid weeks of work that supposedly will give you marketable real world experience
AKA an understanding of what your chosen business environment might be like. But it's unfortunate that so many college students kill themselves trying to land the perfect internship when valuable experience really is gained waiting tables.
At first, it might seem like a stretch. Could applicable work experience exist in a mere air-conditioned restaurant? Could a smiley face scrawled on a check be akin to a firm handshake when closing a business deal? Could financial market fluctuations parallel tip variations?
Examining my past serving experiences, I saw that useful skills are learned in the space between the grill and table tops in many restaurants. Amidst the fast pace of the lunch or dinner rush, the results of decisions are immediately apparent. Knowledge and instincts are your guides, not your internship coordinator.
Each table is a chance to practice the problem solving skills that are so desired among employers. You learn patience as you stand at a table of indecisive patrons while three other tables' food sits in the kitchen, awaiting delivery. The repercussions of bad customer service are felt immediately as a reduction in the cash haul at the end of a shift. Reliance on your fellow servers to help you fill drinks or greet tables forces you to act as a team, whether or not you agree with other servers' office politics. We're talking about marketable skills here, all learned as you scribble orders on a notepad.
A friend once told me about an interview where her future boss asked her if she ever had waited tables. She was curious as to why he asked. He told her that good servers have a knack for thinking on their feet and possessing an excellent memory: skills that he wanted his employees to have.
When selling yourself at an interview as a focused and detail-oriented worker, waiting tables can serve as an excellent reference. The final touch of a sprig of parsley on a plate is as important as the strong closing statement in a client presentation. The wrath you might feel if you drop the ball on a project at work is similar, if not less fierce, than dropping a tray full of food in front of hungry restaurant patrons.
Filing papers and finishing projects during your internship doesn't really show how you hold up under pressure. On the other hand, a restaurant is a veritable pressure cooker. When things go bad in a restaurant, they go catastrophically bad. One evening, during dinnertime at the hamburger place where I worked, we ran out of French fries. It was certainly a crisis worthy of public relations skills. My fellow servers and I practiced major damage control that night.
Even academic disciplines are better understood after a summer waiting tables. Interested in a career in sociology or psychology? Every meal is a lesson in human behavior. You would not believe what those weird people at table 9 ordered again: two small glasses of hot water and a mug of ice. We'd see elderly couples, one half ordering for the other without fail. And we'd always wonder what drove people to ball up their straw wrappers into maddeningly tiny pieces.
During my stint as a waitress, cleaning up the ice cream that toddlers smeared on the walls, dealing with the dishwasher who walked out during the dinner rush and the manager who smoked more than she managed tested my sanity. But at least I wasn't trapped laboring for free in exchange for a semi-useful internship experience.
It's just too bad that I can't write receives excellent tips on my resume.
- Jessica Moskwa is a graduate student in the College of Business. Send her e-mail at jessmoskwa@yahoo.com. 17
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Jessica Moskwa
