How Service Work Makes and Shapes Us
Mirrors, Janet from "The Good Place," and what it feels like for your life to go from 2D to 3D
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Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about change.
My last newsletter piece was about businesses adapting to evolving circumstances and unforeseen challenges—and how stubbornness, whether refusing to let go of antiquated ideas or avoiding responsibility when harm has been committed, can be really damaging. Maybe it’s no surprise that, since writing that piece, I’ve been reflecting on my own change.
The other day, I hopped on the phone with an old friend from college. He mentioned that he had recently switched jobs, and was now working in the service industry. He was a little sheepish about admitting that. We both went to an ivory-tower school with a narrow definition of what success and achievement could look like. A common joke among graduates was that you’d leave school and either become a consultant or an investment banker—I was part of our school’s mock trial team, and nearly 90% of my then-peers have since become lawyers.
I had the same hangups as my friend when I first shifted to full-time coffee work a decade ago. Back then, I, too, thought success only looked one way, and that I was betraying something fundamental in myself by veering off the path I’d been told to follow. But something shifted unexpectedly—and coffee ended up making me a better version of myself.
There were the smaller changes I noticed first. Dealing with challenges like juggling 20 tasks at once, malfunctioning equipment, and absent bosses ultimately made me more patient, and interacting with customers made me more empathetic. But there are deeper ways that service work has changed me.
Being a barista is an active, social job that requires interacting with all kinds of people; it feels far from the solitary nature of office- or computer-oriented work. Being behind the bar meant talking to customers, and bosses, and co-workers regularly. I also got to spend a lot more time with myself, noticing qualities I’d never picked up on before, and identifying skills and traits that I enjoyed exercising. Much of the time, it felt like the work was holding a mirror up to myself—and watching myself navigate various interactions and challenges, and meet all kinds of people, was really revealing.
School never felt that reflective for me. For most of my life, I was taught to aim for a goal, but to never contextualize that goal. All that mattered was that following the right path would lead me to success. I never really had the time, or motivation, to ask if that path was somewhere I wanted to be. What was I learning along the path—and why was I there in the first place?
Service work, in the mirrors it held up to my life, changed that paradigm entirely. I remember thinking: “Oh. I’m a person. I am traveling on this path, taking steps, displacing dirt, air, matter … do I actually want to go in this direction?” My eyes went from focusing straight ahead to taking in everything and everyone that surrounded me, and that gave me the chance to gauge my own internal weather, as well as the community I was part of. The change was as extreme as going from a two- to a three-dimensional world.
Being in coffee is what gave my world depth. I do think service work, unlike any other profession, offers the near-constant chance to engage with yourself. It’s both a time to be selfish and deeply reverent to others. You’re always interacting with and being changed by the people you meet, as well as your own observations about yourself.
As I wrote this, I thought about the character Janet from “The Good Place.” One of the long-running gags in the show is that, as an information center and all-knowing being, Janet gets rebooted over and over again. Every time she’s restarted, she changes a little bit, gaining new skills and traits and becoming a slightly better version of herself.
In some ways, service work does feel sometimes like being rebooted, or living a hundred thousand different lives. Nigel Price talks about this idea of “two lives” in his episode of this podcast, which is a feeling I resonate with, but I’m not sure if I just happen to find the only other person who shares this sentiment. But I do feel grateful and gracious to not be on the cliff, gliding smoothly without interacting with my surroundings. Instead, I’m like a Janet, learning something new with every experience, allowing myself to be changed by my daily interactions.
I hope that sounds exciting to you. If it does, it’d mean the world to me to hear how service work—or any life experience—has changed you.
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