Royals Essay 20

My most important leadership role during high school was when I was working in Mcdonald’s when I was 15. I was working there for a couple of months but in that span of time, I learned a couple of skills which still come in handy to this day.
It was always a handful to be working there–since they didn’t want anyone younger than 16 working there due to ‘the younger kids being lazy’ but they made an exception for me, because my sister knew some of the crew there. They kept an eye on me for a while, but they saw my potential with speaking with customers—my time on serving the food and prepping it. The reason I bring this up is because there’s this time when we were in a major food rush due to the superbowl happening at the time, and it was severely understaffed that day; the manager had to go home early and they left basically all the teens including me working. We all had the oldest of our group to assign us to specific areas and I was put with speaking to the customers and handing out the food. I had to deal with the stress in the front, had to spend my time translating for customers, handling angry ones with the wrong orders, it was a mess—luckily the manager that went home early sent a massive text saying we could close early, which is what we did.
I bring that experience up when it comes to leadership because in general a group of people saw me as the best one when it came to communicating with people without having the stress and anxiety in the surroundings cause me to burst out in front of everyone. It also taught me a skill to learn to time myself and calculate things to have the best outcome for things and people around me. It also taught me how to carry myself in specific situations, especially emotionally–because even under all the pressure and stress in my surroundings at the moment I knew what to do, how to keep calm and maintain a professional composure. There’s many skills I learned that day but throughout the job I learned plenty more—but I feel like those were important for what I want to study for in the future. I say that because I want to further my education by entering the medical field . In the medical field you have many things to be concerned about when it comes to your patients, things like: the best treatment for them, listening and understanding their problems, dealing with the emotional stress and the adaptability to situations—I feel like I’ve gotten a pretty good understanding that part of entering my medical studies. Although there are many more skills I must learn, It’s the ones that deal with communication and dealing with stress that I feel like I need a good grasp on with the field I’m going to enter. For example–there’s going to be times where I’m dealing with a patient and they don’t want the treatment and our opinions don’t align which can cause some anger, and cause me as the caretaker to figure out in the moment any other substitutions that are equally best as the first—but that’s why it good to have these skills, because I can figure a way out on respecting their opinion while still having my own to myself, and still have a good treatment for them to come out healthy and well.
That job also inspired me to get into the medical field because I can learn to keep the person and or patient happy, while still caring about their health and keeping them informed on their health and the way they’ll be taken care of. It’s also the fact that in a way I was impactful on their well-being because I found a solution to their health issues. That leadership role also taught me to keep a professional ‘look’ and keep calm in the most stressful situations, while also maintaining a professional neutrality when it comes to a patient’s hostility and aggressiveness.
There’s another time, when I was working as a waiter in a high-end restaurant, where we had to deal with many customers, one time where they weren’t liking their orders. My area’s tables didn’t have any complaints about their orders, the only thing I did whenever I was serving my tables was, asking them for any allergies, their preferences, and serving them extra glasses of water just in case. My friend who was working with me told me at the end of our shift about how our manager was pleased with my skills on maintaining my area tranquil, and keeping a good pace.
Those skills from that job also taught me to be fast when multitasking, and also crisis management. Those skills also help me with my future education in the medical field, because at times I’ll be needing to help multiple patients and responding to emergencies and keep and maintain my composure.
To summarize, the skills I’ve learned in both working at Mcdonald’s and as a waiter, taught me skills regarding on dealing with stressful situations, maintaining a professional composure, and the skills to multitask in times of emergencies which’ll help me when I further my education in the medical field.