Your first job won’t teach you much about the work. It’ll teach you plenty about you.

STILLNESS

WHAT THIS MEANS

A first job is rarely about the skill. Folding shirts or taking orders is learnable in a week, and after that the real information is about you: whether you arrive early, how you take being corrected, what you do in the slow hour when nobody is watching. That information follows you into every job after, long after you have forgotten the register codes.

Pay attention to your own reactions on the next shift rather than to the tasks. Where did you get impatient, and what made you want to hide. One honest answer there is worth more than a perfect drawer count.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

What did your first shifts teach you about yourself?

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