Taking Pride In Your Profession

There is a grocery store near my office that I visit very often for lunch. It's not because they have the best prices, a restaurant inside, or some unique feature that no other grocery store has.

I go for the salad bar, which is one of the best I've ever seen.

First of all the variety is impressive. Sure they've got the standard iceberg lettuce, croutons, and bacon bits but they have so much more. Marinaded artichoke hearts, various pasta salads, thick sliced pepperoni, grilled chicken etc. Plus its the cleanest salad bar I've ever seen.

The selection and the cleanliness are all due to one man. Larry.

Larry is a retiree that works in the produce department part time but his main focus is the salad bar which he's entirely responsible for. Larry worked as a chef is a past life but the hours and hectic atmosphere got to be too much so he does this now instead.

Larry couldn't chat long today because someone placed tongs in the wrong bin and made a mess of the ham cubes. As he rushed over to fix everything I walked away with an appreciation for Larry's pride and dedication for something I take for granted.

Focus: What do you take pride in? Is there some part of your job that might be trivial but that you pay special attention to?

 

As a high school basketball coach, I am mostly judged based on the team's win-loss record. It's human nature, and part of the job you have to accept. There is one aspect of my team, however, that I take more pride in than anything else ... and that's the way the kids act.

Game days the players are required to wear a shirt and a tie. They are not allowed to have earrings and must be clean shaven every day. If they act up in class, I am the first one to hear about it, and they know that the whole team will pay for their misbehaviors. When we go out in public, they damn well know they better act like perfect gentlemen. This may seem trivial, but it means a lot. The kids are not just representing themselves and the school, but their families as well.

I have gotten more compliments from not only other coaches and teachers but also parents, on the behavior of my kids. Everyone seems amazed that a group of kids 15-18 years old can manage to not act like fuck-ups. The kids realize this as well, and relish all the compliments and acknowledgement that they get for their behavior, and many of the older kids will correct a younger one before I have a chance to.

 

I'm a libarian [sic] sort of, and my current job is doing everything with incoming book collections except for the cataloging. Then I learned cataloging.

Since my predecessor was a prick who didn't really like her job, she stopped doing it. Apparently you can get away with this. Not to mention the fact that she never got off her ass to put up/take down shelving or do any of the requisite manual labor. So when I took over there was no training, no guidelines, no manual, and noone really knew how my job worked. So I had to make up my job. I figured it out, designed a database to manage our collections, I'm writing a procedures section of the manual to describe what I actually do (as I learn new things I'm adding them to my job description, like cataloging and basic preservation. Sucks for the next guy.) and I spend a good portion of my day running around, hustling basically, trying to keep things moving. I have an MS and I make less than a school teacher, but my job is really really fun and I get to work with some really cool shit.

And my Collection Management database can kick your Collection Management database's ass.

 

I also worked in a grocery store, in the Deli area for the greater part of the last 4 years and I have always sold to the customer what I myself would only eat.

 

Don't some admins use it as an insurance policy? They make their server storage systems so complicated or fucked up that they become indispensable?

 

One thing I ( and all officers should) is make sure the narratives on reports are as detailed and presentable as possible. That shit will most likely end up in court-and it's your record of the events, so get that shit down right.

 

As an x-ray tech, my entire job may seem trivial to many because of the lack of prestige associated with low level hospital employees. My job is 90% detail related, 10% patient care. I know that seems crappy, but we only see the patients for a few minutes and then give them back to the nurses.

I see each patient's exam like a puzzle that I have to solve by sight and touch. You can't see on the outside what will be on the image. There are external landmarks and visual cues that help you figure out what you will see on the inside. But before you push that button, there is always a split second of insecurity that maybe you didn't feel for the correct anatomy or that they will somehow be different than the last patient.

When my x-ray comes out perfectly, I take pride that I did my job well and that I used proper exposure factors so the image is of diagnostic quality. I feel I have contributed in some way to helping that person get better, even though I just zapped them with radiation.

 

This. I take pride in my writing. In my line of work, I deal with a lot of police reports, and most of them are fucking horribly written. When I write a report, I'm sure to write a clear, concise, detailed narrative. I also proofread it twice so I know I catch all typos and/or errors.

The girl at my local McDonald's is probably the most professional fast food worker I've ever done business with. She's always very polite, she works hard and fast, and she always gets it right. That's hard to come by in a place like that.

 

I take pride in when someone tells me they enjoy my writing. I do it for my own enjoyment, but I get a bigger kick out of someone laughing at one of my articles, or being able to give my friends rides in the cars I review.

 

For me in the world of industrial automation it's figuring out what capabilities the customer might need in 6 mos, a year, or two years down the road.

Sure I could just give them what they bought and up charge them when they need to expand but when they tell me they want to increase production speed/output by 5% and I go in and do a simple reprogram for free and the equipment performs like nothing has changed I know that customer will call me first for their next project.

Telling them, "I figured you might need this feature someday" and getting the well-whata-ya-know look makes my day even if it doesn't immediately put any extra cash in my pocket.

 

I work as a nurse in ICU. There's a lot I could feel proud of at the end of a shift, like being able to cannulate first go, every time, or picking up on a problem before it gets serious.

But the thing I take pride in the most is being able to preserve the dignity of my patient.

If any of you guys have ever seen the inside of an ICU, you'll know it's a very open place. No private rooms, just a bay for each patient and lots of machines. The idea behind that is to ensure our patient is always within line of site. What it also does is make personal dignity hard to maintain. Most of the patients are unconscious with tubes hanging out of every orifice, and most of the time that prevents them from even wearing a hospital gown.

Nothing annoys me more than seeing a nurse with the sheets pulled back, exposing the patient to the rest of the unit unnecessarily.

To combat this, I have slowly developed a set of ninja like skills involving towels, sheets and even washcloths to ensure the 'bits' of my patient are never left flapping in the breeze.

It's the little things.

 

I love to hang doors and frames. It's one of my favorite chores at work, and sometimes it is a chore.
Generally, doors are taken for granted. Open/close. Repeat.
If it isn't done right the first time you're in for some serious aggravation.
Hanging crown moulding is serious fun. I love making joints disappear.
I pretty much love my work so, the pride follows pretty close.
The bondo and spackle don't hurt either.

 

I'll work on just about anything that moves; cars, trucks, tractors, lawn equipment, etc. One thing that really grinds my gears is seeing sloppy wiring jobs. You see a lot of shitty wiring done on stereo installations, car alarms, aftermarket lighting systems and the like.
I always make sure that my wiring is done as professionally as possible, preferably to the point where it looks like it was installed at the factory. That means routing the wires properly where the part they are going to can be serviced without having to cut them, and if that isn't possible, installing a Weather Pak (TM) or similar connector to ease removal; using heat sealed crimp connectors (if there is one thing that really pisses me off, it is seeing where some jagoff just twisted two wires together and slapped some electric tape on it), using factory grade wire loom...Y'all get the idea.
Bad wiring can cause all manner of annoying intermittent problems on a car, even effecting systems that aren't directly related to the part that was installed.
I do the same thing with fuel and brake system plumbing. I've seen some really shitty/dangerous looking jobs out there, and usually I end up having to fix some other asshole's bad job, and the real loser is the customer having to pay for the job twice.
With that said, I just take the whole job of being a technician very seriously. If a customer asks me to do a half-assed job for the sake of money, I'll turn them away without a second thought. I'm going to do the job right or not at all.
Now the way that I work on my own vehicles is sometimes a different story...(Mechanics always drive fucked up cars that would be dangerous in the hands of the average citizen)

 

I am an ICU nurse and I can totally appreciate this. In the event that the patient is conscious (i.e. your head injury patient who craves nothing more than being naked) I will spend the entire 12 hour shift trying to pull the sheet up over the patient's privates or snapping their gown up for the thousandth time that hour because I know that their granddaughter really doesn't want to see Pop Pop's penis and wrinkled bum. It is a losing battle, but boy do I try.

For my own personal pride, I really like my patients to be neat and tidy. I like my room to be clean. I like all of my tubing to be labeled and untangled. I have some weird phobia the pillowcases must all be facing downwards because inevitably the patients could squirm and the case will slip off of the cheap slippery pillows that hospitals use and that covering will be touching the patient's skin and that is gross. I gives me some sense of calm in the middle of the chaos. Of course it is often short lived, but I haven't given up trying yet.

 

I take pride in two main areas of my job. My Stores and my Stores System. In both cases everything is arranged neatly and catalogued according to the correct system codes, with re-order levels clearly shown to ensure zero fuck-ups occur. In my last position, this basically meant I had to redo the entire system and store rooms because the guy before me just didn't give a fuck.

As I've just started a new job, and it's with a brand new hotel, I get to do all this from scratch and my desk is now a mess of diagrams to help me link all the relevant data together. By the time I have finished, every item in the Hotel should be able to found and re-ordered with ease.

 

Im only 19, so I have been working for 5 years, but this summer I had the best summer job I ever had working for a local tree removal service under a five minute drive from my house. It was hard, long work (65-70 hours of work in 5 days) but nothing beats showing up to a jobsite, and clear cutting a 5 acre forest in a day. When your tired as hell come sundown, and your arms are numb from the chainsaw vibrations, you can look back and say "look at what we accomplished in a day." The paycheques wernt bad eaither.

 

I'm a Kindergarten teacher, and I take pride in my ability to respond quickly to notes from home and memos from other staff members. A lot of times teachers push those kind of things to the side because of all the other things we have to do. I try to respond and put my response in the childs notes or the staffs mailbox ASAP. Too many times I have to go to the person and ask what I needed to know again after already sending an email or note to only have them say "oh did I forget to answer?" I hate that.

 

I am a customer service rep for a home warranty company. I get called all kinds of names, from Bitch, to dumb ass/fat ass, even a C*nt ( sorry don't like that word ), all because their shit isn't covered. I use to take it extremely personal, but I have worked there now for 3 years and find it to be my favorite job so far. I talk to so many home owners who don't understand our policy and I take the time to spell it out for them. There are some people that don't appreciate it at all and some that are so thank full. I love when I get the phone passed from husband to wife and they both contradict each other. If people only knew that the more respectful you are the more I will go out of my way and try to find a loop hole to assist in getting their problem resolved.

The bottom line is, I love what I do. No matter the names I get called. When I get screamed at and told that I don't know anything because I am a girl I just laugh. I love being able to help people which is why I chose this field. I Love knowing that an 80 year old woman who lives in Az with no A/C and it is 110 degrees is taken care of right away, because I used all the tools given to me over the years to get her the help she needed. When a H/O thanks you non-stop and even calls you when the work is done to thank you for your time, it really makes your day!

Obviously I know my job is not saving lives like a lot of people in this world, but it is still helping someone in need.