Teen employees: work on your attitudes!
Just because you have a job doesn’t mean you get to be rude.
Standing at the corner, I was approached by a young man apparently registering voters. It was as if pushing the ‘walk button’ had somehow signaled this guy with a clipboard, instead of the light. I let him give his spiel, but told him I wasn’t old enough to vote. We crossed the street together, and he said something about watching him "in action." I watched him walk up to another girl, only to be rejected again. He returned smiling, nonetheless. Since I was just leaving the Glendale Galleria, on a half-hearted job search of my own, I asked him if he liked working outside, He grinned, "I get paid to hit on girls all day." Unfortunately, I don’t think that all teenagers enjoy the "working world" as much as 18-year-old Nazier Scharif.
After a few recent experiences with young discourteous employees, I am beginning to think some teenagers don’t really care about their jobs. I’m beginning to think they just want to make some quick money, or make people think that they’re responsible.
Recently I was at a local fast food place and the teen cashier was talking to her friends on the other side of the counter. "Seriously, he’s such a (expletive)," they went on dissing some guy, while I waited for my food. "F—- him," continued the girl as she put my fries on a tray. I couldn’t imagine having that job and thinking I could get away with being so unprofessional. I know if I was paying someone a check every week, I’d want him or her to be polite to the customers.
Amy Ruvalcaba, 17, of Los Angeles was annoyed when a teen employee at a coffee shop told her they couldn’t serve her a caramel macchiato—even though someone else had just bought one. "I was so confused. I don’t know why she didn’t like me. There was no need for her to be that way," she said.
Show some respect
Teen employees must "have respect not only for adults, but also for their peers," says Fred Farias, owner of Crescenta Valley Hobby and Craft in Montrose. Farias has been hiring teens for 44 years. Besides a few teenagers that made a few "honest mistakes," he’s had mostly good experiences. He doesn’t tolerate disrespect in his employees or his customers. When dealing with disrespectful employees, Farias says, "I just tell ’em ‘you’re rude’."
I’m no etiquette expert, but I know what is effective and what isn’t. As a teenage customer I have made more than a few observations of teenage employees. These are just a few tactics that I think make all the difference in the (working) world.
1) Smile. I’d say that probably, eight out of the last 10 teenagers who served me, did so with expressionless faces.
2) Kill ’em with kindness. Erin Gavinski, 20, an employee at Partyline in Montrose, said that in dealing with troublesome customers, she says she’s never lost her cool. "No matter how rude they are, you have to be nice to them." Patti, 23, of Contempo Casuals in the Glendale Galleria agrees, "Essentially that is your job, that is what you are paid to do."
Being polite won’t solve all your problems. "When there’s two people on each phone, and three people in the store, it gets pretty confusing," said Olivia Brookman, 16, who had been working in a flower shop for about a week. "My boss threatens me every day. ‘If you screw up one more time today, you’ll be out by the end of this week.’ But I don’t really screw up that much."
