<p>I just got fired at my minimum wage, ice-cream place job at I’m feeling really depressed. The thing is I tried really hard at being good at my work but I was terribly inefficient, slow, just awful overall. I keep thinking that NO ONE gets fired from these kind of jobs, it should be a job anyone is capable of doing if they try their hardest and yet I failed at it miserably. I know its probably ridiculous but have any parents on here had similar experiences in their lives and were able to move on and find successful careers? I worry that if I can’t even handle a minimum wage I’m really not college or job material.</p>
<p>I know its bad to fall into this self-pitying state but I just feel like I’m the only person in the world who manages to fail at these things. Any advice on how to improve my job skills, what kinds of jobs to look for now over the summer, or telling of similar experiences would be really appreciated right now.</p>
<p>Just because a job is minimum wage doesn’t mean that it’s easy or that anyone can do it.</p>
<p>I have great respect for waitresses because there’s no way that I could keep the orders straight or carry the plates without breaking some. And I’d be so nervous that I wouldn’t be able to be pleasant.</p>
<p>Look for a job that more nearly matches your skills. Perhaps doing office work, being a department store clerk or being a tutor would be better for you, for instance. </p>
<p>See if you can figure out what about the ice cream place job was difficult for you, and look for jobs that without those challenges.</p>
<p>All jobs have a learning curve, too. It’s normal to make mistakes and be slow when you first start working any job. Given the recession, there’s a chance that sales were down (or even if sales stayed the same, profits were down because food is costing more) and your supervisor let you go because the store didn’t need as many employees now. The supervisor may have found it easir to blame you than to tell you the truth.</p>
<p>I agree with northstarmom’s advice.
My very first job was a minimum wage job as a kitchen helper in a retirement home. The other employees were much older than me, and not very nice to me. The residents were mostly very sick and cranky. I felt miserable and overwhelmed by it. To this day (more than 25 years later) I cannot stand the smell of coffee because it reminds me of that job. Here’s the happy part: it never mattered in my life ever again that I was not very good as a kitchen helper. There are many things I am good at, and that’s what I went on to do. You will, too. (You may hate ice cream for while).
P.S. My friend Lisa who was great at serving ice cream gained ten pounds in one summer doing it…maybe this is a good thing that you are going to find a different job!</p>
<p>I got fired from a counterperson job when I was 16, working at a fast food chicken place. That was 2 weeks into the job. I also was fired from a non-chain submarine sandwich place after a management change, and I was forced to quit my very first minimum-wage fast food job when the manager kept scheduling me to work late shifts on school nights. At all of these jobs, and at some of the other minimum wage jobs I had, I did many, many boneheaded things. That was part of the learning curve, which is why one boss didn’t fire me when, on my second day of work, I accidentally spilled 50 gallons of grape slushee mix all over the floor, and why another boss didn’t can me when I added where I should have subtracted, resulting in one of our clients overdrawing his account. I have moved on, and have a successful career. Ditto my brothers, who on two separate occasions left the freezer door open at the ice cream parlor they worked at as teenagers.</p>
<p>I also agree with all of Northstarmom’s advice.</p>
<p>I was and still AM inefficient and slow on my feet. I sucked at all my entry-level jobs. My strengths are in completely different areas. I not only completed college, I did very well in life. </p>
<p>Each job moves at a different pace. I got fired from one waitressing job because I moved too fast! </p>
<p>The restaurant was a steak house where the customers wanted to slowly eat their big meals and drink their many drinks. The restaurant was new, so it wasn’t crowded, and the wait staff didn’t have full areas. I was also new and coming from another waitressing job where I always had to move move move, and it turned out that I was lousy at slow. I pestered the poor customers, asking them repeatedly if they needed anything, which made them feel like I was hurrying them through their meals. I had no feel for the flow of the place or what this kind of customer wanted from their eating experience. </p>
<p>After one week on the job I wasn’t put on the next week’s schedule. Rather embarrassing and painful.</p>
<p>After that, I went back to fast-paced restaurants where I was always very happy. (When I was in college no one was ever diagnosed with ADHD, but I’m sure I lean that way!)</p>
<p>Like Northstarmom suggested, pick yourself up, shake yourself off, and find a job that lets you play to your strengths. I bet you’ll be great at whatever comes next.</p>
<p>An excellent book that will help you identify your strengths is “Strength Finder”. Another is “Soar with your strengths”. The more that you can play to your strengths on jobs and in life in general, the happier and more fulfilled and successful you’ll be.</p>
<p>M, congratulations on getting fired. You should send them a thank you note for doing you a favor. Then, get busy and discover all of the famous, successful people who have been fired from various jobs. I am convinced that everyone is going to be fired from some job or another, sooner or later, the exceptions perhaps being the public sector or "safe’ jobs.</p>
<p>Everyone is differently gifted. I too would be fired from an ice-cream shop - I would confuse the orders, spill the food, give back the wrong change - you name it, I would mess it up royally. But I also think there’s something to what NSM said - it could have been an economic decision, not a performance issue.</p>
<p>Absolutely true story: My HS debate team staffed the concessions stand at the HS football games. The first time I worked at the concessions stand, I served a customer coffee in the kind of wax-lined cup intended for soft drinks. It was not the only <em>dumb</em> thing I’ve ever done, and yet my username is authentic.</p>
<p>My son has Asperger’s…three years ago he was about an inch away from being fired from a VOLUNTEER position! So many bosses have unwritten rules and unspoken expectations and he doesn’t get any of that. </p>
<p>I could never ever be a waitress…I could never carry food without spilling and couldn’t keep the orders straight.</p>
<p>A few times a year we have have to do school fundraisers at Sonic-we are car hops. At every one, I spill at least one huge drink.</p>
<p>The lowest paid jobs are sometimes the hardest! I always thought so. As I worked my way up into higher paying things, the jobs got easier to me. People were more respectful, too, and work conditions more comfortable, and better. And of course, pay and benefits so much better. Minimum wage jobs are hard!</p>
<p>I had a friend long ago who told me she got fired from 10 minimum wage jobs when she worked in NYC. We were both working together in San Francisco at the time at my first job in SF when we became friends, and she told me her story (and no, she never got fired from that job.) </p>
<p>I remember she told me she got fired from an ice cream place for eating too much ice cream. And she got fired from a restaurant because she said to a customer, “If you want faster service, go to McDonald’s”. She had great bounce back skills. She was also pretty independent, creative and feisty. And her personality was not really suited for customer service, thinking back on it. She did much better not working with the public. </p>
<p>My son’s first job, in high school, was his worst. He had a young girl (high school age ) threatening to fire him – I don’t know her, so I have no axe to grind, but at the time it seemed pretty power tripping and petty. He got another job because the work atmosphere was so awful. He was very successful at his next job and the manager loved him. The work environment was more organized and pay was better too.</p>
<p>Good luck to you on your next job!</p>
<p>Oh, and college is very different from working a min. wage job.</p>
<p>I tried to work at a donut shop my freshman year in college. Worked one 4-hour shift and was not invited back. Here is what I learned from it… 1. work in an donut shop and it will cure you of ever wanting to eat the things. 2. I don’t do so well in jobs where my mind has an opportunity to wander. So now I do income taxes and do not eat donuts. Both ultimately good outcomes. </p>
<p>H has been laid off several times from a position that’s prone to it in corporate mergers. Tempted as he was to doubt himself, he has always looked for the lessons in the experience and now has his own successful business because of those lessons. </p>
<p>My favorite quote…“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”…Eleanor Roosevelt. </p>
<p>Yo the customer service jobs are by far the hardest. I worked as a cashier and a gardening associate at Home Depot last summer, and it is pretty much just just insane how stressful it is. I have so much respect for people that work there or in restaurants and shops.</p>
<p>So many times you have to go running around the entire store in your orange apron looking for the manager to type in his top secret authorization password so some random purchase can be made, and all the while the customers are standing there waiting in line impatiently and looking like they don’t have the time of day for your nonsense (as if I enjoyed sprinting frantically around the store all day). Or the check verification machine jams, and you have to just improv it and fix the thing with 10 angry customers looking at you like it’s your fault the thing broke. The thing I hated most was how often customers would up the self-checkout machine! Not like screw up something trivial like their PIN code, but make the entire machine crash or make it emit weird, otherwordly noises. I seriously just wanted to be like, “What is your deal? Can you read? Do you speak English? Are you too good to follow directions? If you pressed ‘Enter’ once and it didn’t respond, do you seriously think it will respond if you press it for the 17th time?” But you have to suck it up, smile knowingly, and say, “Let me help you, sir. That’s a tricky machine, believe me”.</p>
<p>I didn’t get fired, but by the end of my time there, I was HOPING they would fire me. And there were so many days when I felt like a complete failure. I did get paid pretty well for an entry level position ($13.50/hr), but out of the various other jobs I have worked as (sales representative, associate contractor, camp counselor), this one was by far the most difficult. I was mentally and physically exhausted at the end of each day.</p>
<p>I very much agree with all the other posters - minimum wage jobs in the service industry are not the easy ones. I know I tip better than my husband because I’ve been a waitress and know how hard it is.</p>
<p>Just as we talk about finding a college that fits, it’s also good to find a job that fits and each job has it’s own skill set.</p>
<p>We were volunteering and running a concession stand as a fundraiser. I started off with the job of pulling the drinks as they were ordered. I got really confused - I would pour a Dr Pepper and a Coke and instantly forget which one was which. I got fired from that position - my then 17 year old son took over. We still joke about it. But hand me accounts and pages of numbers and I can spot errors and balance accounts that have been messed up for years. I organized and booked every step of the the 5 week/7 country Girl scout trip the fundraiser was for. But I can’t serve soda and I get flustered when a whole bunch of people are yelling orders at me. We all have our strengths.
You will find yours.</p>
<p>swimcatsmom - your post reminded me of my one volunteer experience at the baseball game. I never did get the hang of the beer tap. I felt so sorry for the customers! Clearly, bartending was not for me. However, I did just fine as a grocery bagger and then checker. I found it to be perfect for working my way through school.</p>
<p>OP, as we’ve all stated in one way or another, it takes all kinds of different skillsets to make a civilization go, and everyone has their own little subset. Now you know a little bit more about your own.</p>
<p>I get mixed up when I have to sell at a middle school concession stand where everything sold costs 50 cents. I take an order, turn around to get it, and then have to double check “what did you want again?” if I can figure out which one of the kids just gave me the order. And half of the time I don’t remember if the candy was paid for or not, or whether I have given back change or not. A crowd of middle schoolers looking for treats totally throws me off. (And I have successful career with an advanced degree in a math-related area. Everyone is good at different things. Note to self: Do not open candy store after retirement. It only sounds fun.)</p>
<p>Don’t automatically assume your being fired had anything to do with your performance.</p>
<p>I remember being fired at one of my high school jobs that I loved. You know why? One of the other high school girls with less experience and less skill was fooling around with one of the part-time managers. It was a slow time of the year where I worked, so they had to cut back on employees and this part-time manager wanted this other girl around. When one of the other managers found out, he stood up to bat for me and I got my job back. I still to this day remember this guy who went to bat for me, and have a vivid memory of giving him one of the biggest jump into his arms hug I’ve ever given. It’s OK, though, he had gone to school with one of my older brothers, so the families knew each other.</p>