At a first job, nobody notices you’re smart. They notice you showed up on time for six weeks straight.

Cleverness is invisible at the start of a job, because nobody has given you anything yet where it would show. What is visible is whether the shift is covered, whether you are there at ten to, whether you did the thing you said. Reliability is the only quality a new person can demonstrate, and it happens to be the rarest one.

So spend the first two months being boring and dependable on purpose. Be early rather than on time, say yes to the dull job once, and tell somebody when you cannot make it instead of going quiet. That record is what gets you the better shifts and the reference.