"I’m a Bored Bartender at a Soulless Cafe. I Want to Quit But Can’t Just Yet"

From today.com/food

Anonymous Server, as told to Joseph Lamour

For our series “Server Diaries,” TODAY asks anonymous servers, bartenders and other hospitality workers to record their innermost thoughts while on the job.

Here, we follow a barista/bartender in Long Island City, New York through three shifts.

This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Shift 1: Riding Dirty to the Medium Place

3:01 p.m. It’s hot as balls out.

3:04 p.m. I have a bad habit of waiting till the absolute last moment to get ready and leave for work because I really don’t want to be there.

3:06 p.m. I rush, washing the pits, tits and bits in my sink, smearing deodorant in the former and rushing out the door. I ride my motorcycle there and am still late, walking in the door with my helmet and gloves on.

3:20 p.m. I work in Long Island City at a cafe/wine bar, and it has a nondescript, trust-fund-corporate-bro-investment kind of vibe. Grey isn’t just in the walls — it designed my purgatory.

You’d think we’d have much more foot traffic in a newly-built, fat-cat, fancy-feast-ass tower near the subway, but we’re camouflaged by minimal design and millennial grey aesthetics. It’s slow.

3:31 p.m. I’m greeted by the morning-shift girl, and she looks bored. She glances at me momentarily to say “hey” before continuing to stare into space. She’s summer-job young, and her shock-pink hair looks more excited to see me.

3:33 p.m. No one’s tipped since she got here at 7 a.m., she tells me. I look in our till, and there is a $5 bill, a quarter and somehow, a couple of now-illegal pennies. F--- this s---.

3:45 p.m. My life’s dream is not to serve coffee and low-ABV drinks inside of a hotel lobby business centre designed by a sentient pair of Allbirds. I work in advertising, but freelance jobs have been vampired by AI. Who needs Don Draper when you can make your compu-slave push out endless slop?

3:55 p.m. A friend got me this job. She was like, “You may as well pick up some shifts.” So, now, I’m making money while I’m pitching bigger fish. Ad jobs are infrequent, but cortado-thirsty people are not.

4:45 p.m. I want to be back in the game, working with annoying marketing clients who don’t know s--- about s---, trying to convince them that the bold creative idea is better than the blob-monster drivel their nepo-hire stepson used Midjourney to “paint.” Who knew I would miss making a logo bigger?

5:19 p.m. Basically, the only useful purpose of this gig is to spend my time studying Spanish, writing prose and applying to jobs I actually want.

10 p.m. I served an average number of people today, and yet I still smell and sweat like a roofer in Albuquerque. How, Sway?

10:05 p.m. Walking to my bike, I do a lil’ lesson. “Quiero que mi sueño se haga realidad,” a green, nocturnal animal says to me on my phone. “Quiero que mi sueño se haga realidad (I want my dream to become reality),” I say back. I think a vacation would be fun, but I’m not in a place financially right now. Even for a hostel.

Shift 2: Boredom, Even When I’m Busy

3 p.m. I say out loud, “Well, it’s a hot one,” and immediately sing the next line of that song as I make my way uptown.

3:30 p.m.. The usual scattering of young people greets my eyes as I enter my bar-fé; some on laptops listening to headphones and others silently nursing sweaty, half-finished matcha lattes.

4:19 p.m. Another start-of-shift mistake: There’s a person today who is probably walking around tweaking out of their skull because I used regular beans instead of decaf. Oops.

5:07 p.m. A couple of girls are actually speaking to one another out loud with nary an electronic in sight. Laughter and human connection? In here? Rare.

6:04 p.m. A mother with a Goyard bag — every well-to-do subway mom in New York seems to have one — remarks on how quiet it is in here, but it sounds like an insult. Her toddler is playing with her sludge-coloured skirt. Probably cost more than half my paycheck.

6:05 p.m. She orders a “SMALL cold brew with LIGHT ICE,” said like there is a sign on my head that says “idiot.” She watches me like a hawk to make sure the ice is light. I prepare for her to complain about how the cup isn’t full.

When you order light ice, you get a less potent drink in many cases. Maybe it’s what she wants, judging by her “busy but successful mom of two in yogurt commercial”-ass fit.

I don’t care enough about protecting the financial interests of the ownership class, so I just fill the empty part with more milk.

7:05 p.m. It’s so empty in here I’m learning Spanish out loud. The green bird teaches: “No me gustan los hosteles; son poco elegantes.”

“No me gustan los hosteles; son poco elegantes (I don’t like hostels; they are not elegant),” I say back.

9:33 p.m. A guy and his girlfriend come in hesitantly, looking around. “Is this … the same place as during the day?” he asks. “Or is this a different thing, a speakeasy?” she asks. I am f---ing elated.

Shift 3: My Pal, the Green Owl

3:07 p.m. Another hot-ass day. Temps in the 90s, maybe past 100.

3:19 p.m. As with any toxic relationship, I experience complicated feelings every time I walk through the front door.

4:30 p.m. This is a hobby business for the wealthy. Six people own it — more Injustice Society than Superman investing with Diana Prince.

4:32 p.m. The owners create inherent hypocrisies. It sucks. It’s slow here, so they only want to pay for one person to work the bar but then get pissed when they get a Google review saying the lines are too long. Vandal Savage behaviour.

4:35 p.m. I met one owner, an older woman, months ago. She was notable because she apparently does not know anything about coffee, wine or business. Once I saw her strut behind the bar to pour herself a wine from the tap. She sprayed liquid all over the bar — and herself — because she didn’t realize there was a stopper in the spout that needed to be taken out first.

7:50 p.m. Oh God, 10 people came in at once. Must be a museum field trip. A group order with significantly varying drinks can really throw me.

8:03 p.m. I realized I forgot to add caramel to one of the big group’s cappuccinos. F---.

I thought about running after them, but ennui is heavier than my compassion. Also, I don’t give a s--- about this job.

8:19 p.m. I turn back to the green, spectacled animal in my phone. “Tomas demasiado café,” it says. “Tomas demasiado café (You drink too much coffee),” I say back, adding, “Y vino.” I realize I haven’t learned from the bird how to say “wine” yet. This is irony.

https://www.today.com/food/restaurants/server-diaries-bored-bartender-wants-to-quit-rcna593804

Why you should journal about your work life

From ft.com

By Isabel Berwick

Logging daily highlights can help track the patterns of your activities — and frustrations

I’ve kept a diary at various points in my life, but never thought about doing it in a work context. That’s going to change, after talking to journaling enthusiast Ollie Henderson. Ollie is author of an excellent guide to career transition (another good September topic), Work/Life Flywheel. He posted about his journal on LinkedIn and I was intrigued — so I asked him to share more details with Working It readers. 

He got started, it turns out, for the same reason that those of us who love personal diaries keep at it: maintaining a record of our daily lives, before it is lost to unreliable human memory. Ollie told me that when he started a career pivot, in January 2020, he realised that “thousands of moments that had shaped a decade of my work and life were a blur”. Relatable. 

 He went on: “As I considered my next steps, I struggled to identify the skills and expertise I could offer to other businesses. That’s when I started my work journal. I started by listing things I was proud of, exploring how I wanted my work and life to evolve, and focusing on what I’d enjoyed in my career. Once I had some clarity, I shifted to ensuring I didn’t forget anything else, noting key moments down each day: achievements, challenges I was struggling with, breakthroughs, and interactions with colleagues, collaborators and clients.” 

                                                                 Write it down, feel like a winner © FT montage/Unsplash

 The practicalities of keeping a work journal will depend on your individual preference, but Ollie started with pen and paper. This fits into your life with very little extra effort (or “friction”, to use the techie term), which is key when you start any new work habit 🔑. 

 Writing down short entries in a notebook, whether that’s “as it happens” or during a few minutes of reflection at the end of the day, allows you to record small things that otherwise get lost. When you feel you’ve “done nothing” during a working week, the records (let’s hope) will tell you otherwise. Logging progress and achievement can be especially important for people who are self-employed with no manager to “mark the homework”. 

I asked Ollie to send me a photo (names redacted). 

                                                                                          Ollie’s work diary 

One of the great things about diaries (of all sorts) is that they can show us long-term patterns of behaviour, preferences and problems that we can miss in the tumult of our day-to-day lives. As Ollie told me: “I find it fascinating to see which moments I note down, positive or negative, because the same themes keep popping up. What does it say when you consistently highlight how good it felt to present your ideas to your team? You probably want to do more of that. What does it tell you when your manager consistently drains your energy? Maybe it’s time to look for another job.” 

Ollie has since taken his journaling digital, because he wants to be able to search and find useful data insights. He could not find an app that did everything he wanted so he’s building his own, with the help of collaborators. (Follow him on LinkedIn to keep up with his progress.) 

 None of us are going to be able to turn back time (sorry, Cher). Not to get too deep, but work journaling might help us to make sense of the transience of our lives. Final word from Ollie: “One profound impact is my perception of time. It can often feel like time is slipping away. Stopping to reflect on what you’re doing each day gives the sense of time slowing down. Marking important moments helps you differentiate one day from the next. It stops the sensation of life blurring into one.”

https://www.ft.com/content/c8ef6d82-1118-47d5-a472-d133eafff284 

How Journaling Can Help You Succeed at Work

From sg.news.yahoo.com

When was the last time you thought about how you can challenge yourself? Or took inventory of your accomplishments? Or even checked in with whether you’re happy at work?

Sometimes, you’re so busy crossing tasks off a constantly growing to-do list that you’re inadvertently neglecting your career performance and goals.

You can reclaim that focus in as little as 15 minutes. How? By journaling at the end of every workday.

“A typical day at the office in 2017 involves a lot of professionals constantly moving from one task to another, one device to another,” says Jill Jacinto, a millennial career expert based in New York City. “Journaling is a great tool that can help you reflect on your workplace and the work you are doing.”

We spoke with experts to explore benefits of writing “Dear Diary” daily and provided some journal ideas to help get you started.

Identify your long-term career vision

Take some time to think about what you want to accomplish throughout your career and the type of career you want to have. Introspective questions can help you delineate between what you actually want and what you think you should want.

“Journaling can help you gain clarity on your career vision and keep you accountable,” says Rachel Andujar, founder of the Maryland-based career-coaching firm Rethink Nine to Five. “I remember journaling while still working as a CPA and trying to figure out my next step. By writing it all down, I was able to feel more confident about what I wanted to achieve and who I wanted to impact.”

Journaling prompts: What type of job would I want to do if salary weren’t a factor? What type of company culture is best for me? How do I define a successful career? What are my work values?

Track your progress and future goals

Use journaling to reflect on the past—and focus on your future. Todd Cherches, an adjunct professor at New York University, asks his clients to keep a journal “so that they can capture their thoughts and challenges, reflect back, and track their progress.”

Cherches also notes that journaling allows you to be proactive about planning for the future. (So maybe you’ll have an answer next time someone asks you about your five-year plan.) “Journaling allows you to plan your time better, prioritize, systemize, organize, and strategize,” he says. Identify your goals and create an actionable plan for making it happen.

Journaling prompts: What are some accomplishments I’ve achieved, and how can I continue to build upon them? What are my short-term and long-term goals? What progress have I made toward accomplishing my goals? What are challenges that are making it harder for me to reach my goals?

Create productive strategies for handling work stress

Let’s face it: Sometimes work can be stressful. Use your journal as a safe space to vent without having to worry about your comments getting back to your boss. And that’s not the only benefit; journaling allows you to be reflective and thoughtful before you react.

“Journaling can help you process challenging times, experiences, and events at work in a more effective and productive way,” says Kathy Caprino, founder of Amazing Career Project. “It allows you to take more productive action and have more balanced conversations and interactions going forward.”

Journaling prompts: How did this situation make me feel? What can I do to make the situation better? Is there anything I did that contributed to the situation? What can I do differently next time? Is there anything I can do to reduce my stress?

Evaluate your career happiness

It’s a simple question: “Do you like your job?” But the answer can be, well, complicated. Journaling can help you home in on certain emotions that might otherwise go unnoticed. When you go back and read entries, you might realize that most of them are about feeling stressed, dealing with toxic co-workers, or trying (and failing) to work well with your horrible boss.

“A career is a journey and it can be easy to get stuck in a mindset that how you are feeling today equals a permanent state,” says Alyssa Krane, chief talent strategist at the Toronto-based talent acquisition firm Powerhouse Talent Inc. “Once you start to see concerns appear in more of a chronic state, it may be time to consider a change.”

If you’ve been putting off searching for a new job on Monster, journaling can be just the springboard you need.

Journaling prompts: What tasks energized me or drained me this month? What do I like or dislike about my colleagues? What are some positive and negative things about my work environment? Is there anything I can do to be happier at work? What are some pros and cons about my current job? Would I be happier at another company? Would switching jobs make a difference or would I need to make a career change?

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/finance/news/journaling-help-succeed-230035614.html