Sunday, June 16, 2013

Everything I know about character, I learned from the drive-thru window

"Thank you for choosing to eat here, this is Katherine, how may I serve you today?"  "Thank you for choosing to eat here, this is Katherine, how may I serve you today?"  "Thank you for..."  Over and over and over.  I was taking orders for drive-thru, and the cars just kept coming.
You learn a lot about people when you do drive-thru.  You learn a lot about people doing any fast food position, but especially drive-thru.
People sometimes seem to think that fast food workers aren't worthy of being polite to.  And the person taking orders for drive-thru, it seems, is the lowest of the low.  I sometimes wonder if they think we're just voices, that they don't have to worry about really interacting with us.
You can tell a lot about someone's character just from how they treat you when you're serving them.  There is the occasional person who is downright rude, and there are some people who sound and act very grumpy.  But most aren't that bad.  Most just don't seem to care.  They will place their order  and answer all your questions, but they don't interact beyond that, and they usually don't say please or thank you.
Often, this is how the end of an order happens:
"What cheese would you like?"
"Pepper Jack."
"And what to drink?"
"Dr. Pepper?"
"Anything else?"
Silence.
I read the order back, a little uncertainly.  Are they done or not?
"Your total will be (insert amount)."
At this point, I get one of two responses.  One is that they just drive away.  The other is "Wait, I wasn't done yet."  Well then, why didn't you say so before?!?
About 10% of the time, they don't even wait for me to read the order back to them, they just order and leave.  Or they wait for me to read it back and make sure it's right, then drive off before I can give a total.  Over half and perhaps closer to two thirds of all customers don't bother to say thank you.

Then there are the people who just sit there without saying anything when they first pull up.   You greet them, and they don't respond.  You have to just sit there wondering if they heard you, or if they're ignoring you, or what.  Again, somewhere between half to two thirds of people do this.  When things are busy, you are glad for the break, but it's still very frustrating.

And then there are the people who mumble so you can barely hear them.  I have several times turned up the headset so loud that the background noise, hardly noticeable usually, hurts my ear because it's so loud, and they still aren't loud enough for me to hear them.

One last class of annoying people: the ones with pickups.  Pickup truck motors are loud, so most drivers turn them off so we can hear each other.  The problem arises when they finish ordering, and turn their engine back on.  A very concentrated burst of sound blasts your ear, scaring you half to death, along with attacking your eardrum.

Those are the main groups of inconsiderate people.  The people with accents are also annoying, because it's hard to understand them, but they can't really help that.  Then there are the others.  The ones that say please and thank you, the ones that say, "Just a minute," when they have to take the time to look at the menu, the ones that speak up clearly.

After that come the few people who say, "Hi, Katherine!" before they start, acknowledging that I'm more than just a voice, more that just a fast food worker.  Occasionally, they'll even ask me how I'm doing.

And then there was the one person a few weeks ago.  "Thank you for choosing to eat here, this is Katherine, how may I serve you today?"
"Hi, Katherine, thank you for taking my order!"
I was blown away.  When she came to the window, I made a point to thank her.  She said something to the effect of, "Why wouldn't I?"  I have no idea who she was, I haven't seen her since.  But it's the people like her, who make you feel special when most people pass you by, who keep what remains of my faith in humanity alive.


pointe4Jesus
~Dancing for Him Who died for me.~

Monday, April 1, 2013

When Dreams Die

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted.  Life is getting crazier by the minute.  Anyway...

It's been almost five years now since I decided ballet was what I wanted to do.  Five years of pouring my life into dance.  Around two years ago, my passion solidified into a dream to major in ballet and then to open a studio and teach ballet.  So in February I went out to the college I want to go to to audition for that ballet program there.  It felt like a very solid audition to me.  A week later, I received a very polite rejection.  Cue the cloud of "Now what?", "I'm not good enough," "If only...", etc.
"If only..."  Ah yes, that magic phrase that instantly transports us to the land of imagining what might have been.  If only you had made that one decision differently.  If only that hadn't happened.  If only you hadn't been fired, if only the principal of your school hadn't said that one thing that stuck with you, if only, if only, if only.
And if only the ballet academy I'd been going hadn't decided that I was too old to keep dancing now that I had graduated, making me go to a different, less intense studio during my gap year, I might have made it into the program.  (At least, so my voice of insanity tries to tell me.  I'm doing my best not to listen to it.)
Don't get me wrong, I love my new studio.  It's just that, well...
Rejection hurts.  It took me months before I was even able to drive by the exit I used to get off at to go to my old studio, even though the fastest way to get to my new studio was past that exit.  The exit, for crying out loud, not even the building.  Every time I saw someone who went there, I would tear up.
When I did Nutcracker in December, I was told one day that the director of my old studio was coming to see it.  I almost couldn't go onstage, I was so terrified.
My old studio was the studio attached to the professional company here.  I had promised to take my sister to one of their productions in February.  It was really hard to even go into the theater (though once I did, I was able to enjoy it).
They also offer adult classes.  I have never been to one since I was told I couldn't be a student anymore, even though I have some good friends there.  For one thing, many of the teachers are the same, and I'm a little afraid of seeing them again.  For another thing, I have many memories of that place, and walking the halls again is going to be weird.  I've finally gotten up the nerve to go to the class tomorrow night.
So I've slowly been recovering from the rejection from my old studio, which partially ruined my dreams, but not dreadfully, since I found another studio to keep dancing, and to move up to a level to ace the audition (I had tried the year before, but knew I didn't have much of a chance then.  I had my backup plan in place: keep going to the old studio until the next year so I could get in next year)
And then I got rejected this year too.
Now my dream was really shattered.  How could I open a studio and teach if I couldn't major in ballet?  Everything I had worked for for five years was gone.
And then I remembered the other program.  It had been mentioned while I was at the college as an alternative way to be able to teach ballet.  It's called "Arts Administration", and, besides the possibility to teach, also teaches the business side to running a studio.  It's a much stronger major for someone who wants to teach.  Suddenly, my dream was alive again.  After a few weeks trying to make sure this was what God wanted me to do, I felt that it was.  So now I'm just waiting for some paperwork to go through, and I'm headed to the Arts Admin program.
My dream is the same, and it is different.  It's still the same end goal, but it's not at all how I thought I would get there.  It's an even better way.  Funny how God works like that.

"The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps."  Proverbs 16:9

UPDATE: I went to the adult class last night.  There were even some friends from the studio there too.  When I learned that the director of the studio himself would be teaching, I almost turned around and went home, but I stuck it out.  He made a point of telling me that it was really good to see me, and that he had noticed me at Nutcracker and that I had looked really good, and he even told me "good" a couple of times during the class.  Once I got going, I had a blast.  I think I'm finally ready to move on.  There will still be those moments when I wonder what might have happened "if only," but I think I've finally gotten to the point where I can move on.


pointe4Jesus
~Still dancing for Him Who died for me.~

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Valentine's Day, and Real Love

I've made the firm decision not to date until I go to college.  I've also just started to find out how it feels when all your friends are starting to get engaged, and you're still by yourself (most of the friends in question are several years older than I am, so it's not like they're too young or anything.  Still gives you that feeling).
Valentine's day is next Thursday, and people were putting up decorations at work yesterday.  For a minute, I got that "I'm all alone" ache, and then I started to think.
What does Valentine's Day mean, really?  When you're little, it's the day you give valentines to all your friends at school, and they give you some back, and if you're lucky, you'll get one from the cute boy across the room, and you won't get one from the ugly slob who sits right in front of you.  But it's all feelings.
Then you grow up some, and get a boyfriend, and Valentine's Day becomes a day that he gets you flowers, takes you to a REALLY nice restaurant, not the middle-of-the-line nice ones you usually go to, and he tells you he'll love you forever, he'll only ever love you, and all that mushy stuff.  And then after awhile, you break up and move on.  So much for loving each other forever.  It was still just feelings.
Maybe when you get married, it's a little different.  Every year, Dad gets flowers for Mom, and they go out.  But then, he does both a lot anyhow, so maybe it's not that different.  And yet, around half of all marriages end in divorce.  So much for loving each other for ever.  They even promised, and it still fell through.  Even promises can't keep feelings around.
Why do we celebrate such a pointless holiday?
I think there are several reasons.  The first is that we all want to be loved.  We all want to feel like we are someone special, and we all want the closeness, the secureness (I'm doing a really bad job of coming up with a word for it, but I hope you know what I mean) that being loved brings.  So we make a holiday so we can feel especially loved.
Second, we all aspire to love each other forever.  Because we're all human, we grate on each other sometimes, often to the point where we decide it's too hard to try to get along.  But, especially in the beginning, you really do want to love each other forever.  So we make a holiday to symbolize what we are reaching for.  But often, we still can't do it.
So why bother?  What good does it do to commemorate a feeling, especially if we can't keep the feeling around?
I think Valentine's Day is supposed to point us to something--or someone.  When we were at our most unlovable, someone still loved us, loved us to the point that he was willing to die for us.  Feelings are notoriously fickle.  No one would die for their feelings, so this love can't have been just feelings.  He was willing to die for us to save us from ourselves.
It's this love, not feelings, but a deep love that overrides the feelings of the time that must exist if any relationship is going to work.  It's this love that we commemorate on Valentine's Day.  It's this love that we try for, even though we can't get it because we're human.  It's only through the One Who died for us that we can ever hope to achieve that kind of love.
Maybe when Dad goes out with Mom and brings her flowers, he's just trying to make it Valentine's day all year.  Maybe that's not a bad idea.

"The world points to paper hearts and romantic movies, and says "this is love."  God takes us to the foot of a cross and whispers "THIS is love."  -a paraphrase of a quote that I have no idea who originally said.


pointe4Jesus
~Dancing for Him Who died for me.~