Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The best and the worst


After High School there where two jobs that so far have been the best and worst work experiences of my adult career thus far. At 17 I was a partner or barista at Starbucks, at the time it was a great fit, for two years I grew as a professional and service provider. Towards the end of my time at Starbucks, I found a second job as an Intern for the Center of Educational Partnerships at UC Berkeley.  As an intern I was given more responsibility professionally than ever before. Reporting to an on sight and off sight manager, planning events, and traveling where some of my favorites.  Balancing two job and school made me feel accomplished so soon out of high school. The most rewarding part of this job was working with students, the program was in its early stages and over three years my job title began to expand. By the end of my internship I was responsible for creating the bench mark of the program, meeting regularly with our board of advisers, and had instructed at three different locations. Needless to say my work was far more important at this job then the second. At Starbucks I grew and had accomplishments, however the staff there did not seem to take their job seriously and the work environment was full of drama and scandal; I was awarded for highest average transaction for the holiday season, loved the benefits of working at such a popular location, and was given the responsibility of illustrating all the in store promotion’s at POS (point of sale). “It sounds like I had fun right?” However, during my time at Starbucks it seems that for every rule in our handbook there was an exception to said rule. Fraternizing in the work place was prohibited, but the Store manager could be seen often giving massages to female workers in his office. I could go on, but in short what made this job the worst I have ever had was the lack of professionalism in the work place. Conversely what made my internship at UC Berkeley the best was all the professional , rewarding, and limitless opportunity that was available to me at that position

3 comments:

  1. I worked at Starbucks too. I too enjoyed working there for a year and it taught me how to have great customer service.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Virgil, I was a barista at Peet's coffee. I understand the pain of having to memorize drinks and going through the exam to get your certificate for being an official barista. The thing is Starbucks has their own whip button on the machine so dont actually whip your own cream. I had to do that at my stupid job, it sucked.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I did sales, but it was different form working at Starbucks.

    ReplyDelete