A sponge. That was all I had in hand when I was unsure what I wanted to do with my life after coming home from college. Nothing in hand but a literal sponge and a work ethic to my name with a reference from my brother, the cook. I stood by the rumbling dishwasher as it spat out steam from every corner, learning the position from my predecessor, hoping I wouldn't mess up the machine. I cared because I wanted to be good at something, anything. I began to master the position and took on anything that came my way, leading to a promotion to server then bartender and eventually, manager. I meticulously watched, learned and practiced skills from each position to hone my craft and these are a few of the skills that were pivotal in my development from the hospitality world as I transition to the developer's world.

Pre-shift/Pseudo-Code

It would become religious how I would make my steps daily leading up to a pre-shift. Making sure I talked with chef, making sure I talked with the beverage director, ensuring the team was present, talking with the host; all these prepared me the next step. This is no different with coding a.k.a a "grown up job". Now, instead of checking with the chef, I am checking the gems file to make sure I have the right gems cooking behind the scenes for me. Instead of checking with the beverage director, I am checking the schema file to make sure everything is fluid. Intead of checking on the team and talking with the host, I am running through code and checking for errors or "guest complaints".

Dealing with Guest Complaints/Error Messages

Much like how every person is different in the world, each of their complaints are equally as different. The issue at hand that is causing them to be speaking to you may have arose in the restaurant, but there are other matters that happened during their day that is going to determine how volatile they may act. Because of this, you have to use contextual clues to observe how to de-escalate the situation which is paralleled into coding in figuring out what the error message is saying and eliminating variable by variable.

Inventory/App Organization

Inventory is never fun...unless the foundation of the inventory is solid from its inception. That was a mistake I had to learn the hard way after opening up 5 different locations in Chicago. After each opening posing different challenges, I learned different steps in how to organize larger and larger liquor rooms, leading to a stronger foundation in organizing at its core. This lesson was brought to the forefront immediately when coding because organizing of models, classes, routes, html, etc is pivotal when constructing applications.

Therefore...

The service industry is tough, it is gritty but it is rewarding. It can give you struggles like you would never expect but it can also give you the biggest senses of pride when your day is complete. It teaches you teamwork and patience that you never thought you had inside you until the moment is needed. It is a career path in which you do not need more than a work ethic to enter but it is those who are willing to give more than what is asked that will get more out of it. Be curious, be willing, be couragous. Take on the "bad job" so you can learn from it and add to your skills rolodex. Coach the new employee so you can re-affirm your skill set and build your communication skills. Do one thing a day to put yourself out of the realm of comfort and I assure you, the right results will follow. Take me for example, I started from the bottom and I refused to let it determine who I was so I became a sponge.