How you do anything is how you do everything.
If you don’t put your best foot forward at every single opportunity, then you are wasting the precious few steps you have on this earth. You can’t half-ass things. Everything you do, do it with your best foot and your entire ass. Maybe also use your arms. Both of them, if needed, including the hands. And any other parts that are necessary to complete the task, whatever that task may be.
Nobody wants to hear your excuses. You know what they say about excuses, right? They’re like assholes. A hole of an ass is even worse than half of an ass. Because a hole is nothing, and that’s exactly what your excuses are worth. Everywhere I go, I look around and I see someone with an excuse. To me, they look like nothing. “How do you see them, if they look like nothing?” you may ask. “You know what I mean, don’t be obtuse” is my response to those asking that question.
When you are at your job, it does not matter what your passion is outside of your job. It does not matter if you have a “gig” with your “Guns N’ Roses tribute band” later tonight. You’re at work, you shouldn’t be thinking about the face you’re going to make during the guitar solo for “November Rain.” Would fake Alex Rose and pretend Duff McKagan like it if you were thinking about upselling an unlimited data plan with 5G coverage in the middle of shredding? Does your employer not deserve the same respect as a guy named Carl who refuses to answer to “Carl” when he is dressed up like Izzy Stradlin?
It does not matter if you see this job as just a temporary stop on your way to something bigger. Our entire lives are but a temporary stop on our way to something bigger. That does not mean we simply brush past them to get to the great beyond, floating through life like spores in the breeze. We are not tree cum jizzing up the earth, planting ourselves in the ground to grow, or landing in my nose to flare up my allergies. We are more.
We must take pride in what we do. Because what we do is who we are. We may think that we are our ideas, or our ambitions, or our morals, or our principles, or our hopes, or our dreams, but we are none of those things. If we were those things, then I wouldn’t be a Secret Shopper. I’d be a pizza restaurant that teams you up with other solo diners so you can save money by going splitsies on an entire pizza instead of ordering by the slice (my idea, don’t steal it, I already mailed it to myself). Or I’d be a guy who, through some loophole in the NSDA, has a year of eligibility left for the high school debate team even though he is in his mid-forties, and I can go back and dazzle them all (my dream). Or I’d be the branch manager for the Greater Delaware County Secret Shoppers local office (my hope, also my ambition). But I’m none of those things. I am only my actions. By taking pride in our actions, we take pride in ourselves.
The service I received today at the T-Mobile store at the Cherry Hill Mall displayed absolutely zero pride, passion, or respect. Not only did it lack respect for me, the customer, but it lacked respect for the T-Mobile corporation and, most importantly, for Kyle S., the representative I was unfortunately paired with during my shopping experience. I would go as far as to say that it’s almost as if Kyle S. did not care if I bought a phone or did not buy a phone. Does Kyle S. not work on commission? Does he not need the money? Is the “S” short for “Salim,” making “Kyle S.” actually Kyle Salim, an heir to Indonesia’s biggest conglomerate, the Salim group? Kyle S. didn’t look Indonesian to me. If George Washington treated his job the same way Kyle S. treats his, we’d all still be singing “God Save the King.” The only King I want to save is Burger, as a little treat for myself after I finish this report.
It is my professional opinion that Kyle S. should receive disciplinary action commensurate with his previous record, whether that dictates a write-up, second write-up, warning, final warning, or dismissal from his responsibilities as a representative of the T-Mobile corporation. It brings me no pleasure to issue this report. As a matter of fact, there isn’t much that brings me pleasure these days. Pleasure evades me, and frankly, I fear it.
But I don’t need pleasure, because I have purpose. And that purpose is pretending to be a real customer when I’m actually there to snitch on service workers to their corporate masters. I fulfill that purpose with pride, and my best foot, and my whole entire stinky ass.
