Early Employment: Strengths and Weaknesses - Essay Example

Early Employment: Strengths and Weaknesses I shall not surprise anyone if I say that many young people today, mostly students, take up part-time jobs and try to combine the two activities – studies and working – and to gain at least acceptable results in both. The main reason for this phenomenon is more than obvious – studies cost some money, and it is necessary to have a source of income to cover the related expenditures and to help the parents bear this period of a child’s life. There is, however, one more reason that is usually not mentioned, but which is nevertheless very significant – early employment provides an excellent opportunity for young people to get acquainted with the real experience of work and to develop their perception and attitude to their labor which will definitely be beneficial for their future employment after graduation: besides experience, they will learn how to behave in a team, how to react to different situations and how to manage their time and fulfill their duties and responsibilities. I am not an exception in this regard, as I have decided to take up a part-time job in the middle of my studies. I work as a manager at a grocery store, and this relative success for a student would be impossible without my humble beginning of my labor experience as an ordinary worker. This is what often distracts the students from starting their labor activities – many responsibilities, relatively slow salary, and necessity to begin from the lowest stage, but life proves that this is an inevitable and vital period in terms of basic skills and knowledge gaining. As it is clear from my sphere of activity, I work in a tertiary sector of economy, that is, the services sector, and the job is related to provision of certain services to the consumers. It is often told that such activity is “useless” and is not a “true” labor to which physical job and production of the goods are related, but this is also an important part of economy as it brings the results of the “normal” work in order and systematizes their outcomes. I must admit that my choice has been influenced by social issues to some extent. Many of my fellow students try to secure their livings by themselves without involving their parents, and their determination at this gives excellent results. The boys from my group recently bought themselves space-age gadgets and covered their expenditures on their educational trip to the places where they had to observe the local peculiarities in order to gain new knowledge. I decided that I also can benefit from such activity, moreover, I hope that my parents have many things to do rather that to constantly think where to earn money for a next studies payment, and my actions were more than logical. The reason of my choosing the tertiary sector is also evident: I had neither previous labor experience nor at least basic professional education to take up, say, any production occupation, and the only chance for me was a humble work as an ordinary worker. The other important thing that has determined my choice is my studies: I cannot spend all the working day in store, the second part of the day and sometimes the night are at my disposal for the purpose of working, so there is a need to combine these activities to cope with both without any losses. One more thing to mention when speaking about why I came to this work is the above mentioned possibility to gain experience of the real labor. I learned to manage my time, to work in a team, to distribute my activities and to fulfill the duties properly, and I believe that these skills will help my future full-time professional activity. This period of adaptation would mean also that I would be paid less when working at a new job, and I prefer to gain more money by means of elimination of the period of primary studies. Another important skill I gained here is money management: when I am paid for my work, I distribute my expenditures, current and possible, and optimize my income, which I regard will also help me in the next stages of my life. The way I have found about this job is also nothing special – I have found an advertisement in a local newspaper that there is a job offer as a worker with the potential promotion provided that the work will be fulfilled properly and will bring considerable positive and both qualitative and quantitative results. I found this offer more than attractive and good enough for that period of my life as my demands were not very high and I could spend my spare time for a new activity. The thing that I have found useful in this working place is the way the work is organized. Like any enterprise, the store has its formal and informal rules. The formal ones, of course, are related to the working process and its organizational moments: working times, working duties, professional relations within the collective of the employees, subordination of the staff, and the rules of material stimulation of the employees for their industrious work. The informal rules deal with personal issues rather than official things, for example, we celebrate each other’s birthdays for a couple of minutes in our office room by congratulations and gifts presenting; the rule of mutual help is also beneficial for us: of course, we inform our management in case of any delays or being late for work, and the employees who are already at the working place help out those who cannot arrive on time (we usually do not abuse this rule, but sometimes it is impossible to do without it). The collective tries to apply standard norms of behavior in all the spheres of activities which helps to achieve better results and avoid unnecessary conflicts. I believe that the motto of our company “do as you would be done by” is the best characteristic of it: if you consider your behavior in relation to the others, you will be able to predict their behavior and avoid adversary actions by means of good treatment of anyone you deal with. This is also right in terms of such delicate aspects as racial, gender, ethnic, sexual and national: our staff is multi-national, there are representatives of different races (there are African Americans and people from Taiwan), and, naturally, there are people of both sexes, and, knowing that any improper action would be treated the same way, we try our best at equally good behavior with any human being within our staff. Read More