MY FIRST JOB IN MY CHOSEN CAREER PAID $3 PER WEEK PLUS ROOM AND MEALS.
Why are our children taught that service jobs are not real. It is almost criminal that the young are actively discouraged from taking a service job and are belittled by many and often.
QUOTE FROM BBC.
Wall Street is no longer powering the New York jobs market according to the New York Times. It says that more jobs have been created in New York over the past five years, than any five-year period in the last half a century. But since the recession Wall Street has accounted for just 1% of jobs added. The new jobs are in technology and in lower paying service industries.
CLOSE QUOTE
I have spent my whole career in the hotel industry, a service industry. I have done well, I think and am a proud member of the 'one percent'. Many have done better but all who I have known who stuck with it, are considered well off. All who I know who have worked their whole life in this industry....love it. It is in fact a way of life.
I started in England at the age of 17. There was not sufficient space in the UK university system to allow for the cancelled military service, the returning servicemen and women and the graduating high schoolers. I was pointed in the direction of the hotel industry. I became a Trainee.
By the age of 22, I had been an apprentice cellar boy, apprentice cook, apprentice waiter, apprentice receptionist and had worked in three countries and learned another language. For this I had graduated to the position of Assistant Manager of a large luxury New York hotel.
By the age of 32, with no university education.....to General Manager of a major iconic golf resort and a brand-spanking- new Four Seasons hotel, still using the skills I had learned as an apprentice. The next ten years saw our family through another three countries where we picked up another language and were exposed to several more cultures and made hundreds of friends.
By the age of 42, we settled into our first house and my work, if you can call it that, involved the supervision of operations in over 60 hotels with 12,000 employees..........all service employees on their way up. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young employees, trainees, junior managers all with their eyes on the prize.
Over the next 30 years, most of those bright-eyed and bushy-tailed service workers had become General Managers, Vice Presidents & Presidents. All that I know still relish the memories of those tough days as entry level employees in an industry that enjoys huge turnover and creates gigantic opportunities for those that are prepared to persevere and to overcome the ignorant perceptions of the service industry.
Thank goodness for the 'lower-paying' service industry. It is still there with thousands of available, sustainable jobs that will never be exported to India. In fact both India and China are short of service industry employees themselves.
It is time for those that know nothing about our industry to stop belittling the huge opportunities that we provide in services. An industry that creates hundreds of thousand of jobs each year in growing communities around the world.
Yes, I made ice cubes by hand.
Yes, I sorted empty bottles.
Yes, I peeled potatoes.
Yes, I flipped 'stuff' on the grill.
Yes, I delivered room service.
Yes, I swabbed floors.
...................... And yes, I would do it again.
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