Narrative CV and Reflection

Story 1

Beginning my first full-time job was a challenge to say the least. I had just come out of a casual job that I had become so comfortable in that it was second-nature to a job wherein a LOT of people relied on my consistent effort and work input. I was picking everything up by my 4th month until I made quite a large mistake that shook the belief I held in my abilities and affected the way I thought people viewed me. To put it quite simply- I felt awful. Instead of letting this mistake ruin my entire workday I decided to sit with it for 30 minutes. I stepped away from my work, had a coffee, (cried) and then picked myself back up and continued on. There were consequences and I had to reassure my manager and myself that I would learn from this mistake and pay more attention to detail in the future. I listened to what my manager had to say about why the mistake wasn’t great but also communicated that I was sorry and that I would try again. I wanted to create the impression that I wasn’t out of control and knew how to handle tough situations while mainly staying self-aware. At the end of the day, we are all working and we all make mistakes so I have used this experience to remind myself of exactly that. 

Story 2

As I previously stated, starting full-time work this year has been challenging. Learning an entirely new role while balancing family, friends, university and self-care has been one of the biggest challenges of all. I found myself starting to fade quickly. I was becoming moody, making mistakes at work, falling out of touch with friends and losing touch with myself and what I liked to do in my spare time. I decided something had to be done. I took this issue to my tutors at the time and explained my situation and was assured that nothing was wroth risking my wellbeing. I took a step back to reset. Instead of leaving university to the last minute, I chipped away at assignments throughout the semester. When I was at work, I focused completely and at 5pm, I logged off and had my me-time. I found my happiness growing and I started to find myself again. I want to be the best worker I can be but that can only happen if I am the best version of myself first.

Story 3

Coming from a casual job where communciation wasn’t the object of the day, moreso pouring beers for customers, learning new styles of interacting was a huge challenge. I didn’t quite understand email etiquette, how the tone changed between formal and informal when it came to Teams and don’t even get me started on Zoom (camera on or off?!). I felt like I was speaking a different language to everyone else for the first 2 months of my job. I knew the only thing to do to rectify this issue was to tune in to my surroundings. I started to pay clear attention to how everyone else communicated and matched their tone in emails and meetings. If I wasn’t sure, I asked in a friendly, confident but polite manner and it hasn’t failed me since. I figured that the only thing I could do was to be confident and when in doubt, always ask questions. This was I gave off the impression that I cared enough to ask about what others are comfortable with while remainly professional and light in my mannerisms. 

Essay

When deciding what to expand on for this part of our assignment I really wanted to sit back and think about my experiences as a young person who is new to full-time employment. I thought about all the challenges I had experienced and decided that I wanted to expand more on communication and emotions in the workplace. As I previously said, communication is something we do everyday in the smallest of ways, however, it isn’t something that is always relied heavily upon in every workplace. Previously, my main focus at work was clocking in and ensuring everything was clean and customers had their products. Going from this automotive job to a role that relied on my communication skills and interactions with others was quite a jolt. This challenge allowed me to really relate to week five’s topic of ‘emotional labour and professionalism in the workplace’.

As a person, I have always been quite good at regulating my emotions and communicating. I have found picking up on social cues quite easy which I feel lucky to do because I understand this isn’t easy for everyone, especially in new environments. I found discussions in week five around emotional labour and the role of communication (Bowles, 2022) at a human level, extremely close to how I feel on a daily basis. The reason I decided to discuss this topic was because I really resonated with the quote “As we’ve moved through the semester, we’ve stepped further from the factory floor or coffee shop towards the kinds of workplaces that we associate with professionalism.” (Bowles, 2022). This is exactly how I felt regarding my transition from working casually to full-time.

The main concept that I had to come to terms with was navigating other people’s emotions in the workplace. This is called emotional labour (associated with sociologist Arlie Hochschild). I found it interesting that workers are having to hide their authentic feelings in order to optimise the workplace experience. I can recall during the first week on at my new job, having to regulate my emotions and almost put a blocker on what I was truly feeling in order to act professional and make a good first impression to my new coworkers. I found this challenging as I wasn’t sure how casual I could be, how to address my superiors and how to properly communicate with buyers outside of my immediate working group. Feeling on edge like this led to feelings of anxiety and doubt within myself. I decided to delve a little bit further into this topic by reading ‘The concept creep of emotional labor’ by Arlie Hoschchild (2018) which absolutely struck a chord with me. I have always struggled with  the concept of imposter syndrome and reading up on why this might truly helped.

Emotional labour being described as “the unpaid, invisible work we do to keep those around us comfortable and happy” (The Atlantic, 2018) was the perfect description for me. The work we put into mediating ourselves for others in the workplace can be draining! My imposter syndrome was really taking a toll. I found asserting myself and asking for what I needed while remaining professional really hard and found common ground with what Hoschchild was saying when they stated “If in the course of asserting yourself you find that you are having to brace yourself against imagined criticisms, or people are looking disapproving and you realize your job may be in jeopardy, all of that bracing and anticipation and experience of anxiety I would count as yes, emotional labor”(2018). I realised I needed to respect my emotions and tune in to what my mind was telling me at work and if this was a true representation of what was happening at the time. I decided the best thing to do was ask my coworkers how they felt about my work and take their answers on board to reduce the tension and stress I may have been feeling unnecessarily.

The idea that professional work would lead to a higher esteem in society and in funds also added to the stress I felt at work. Balancing the pressures of uni while trying to establish myself in my job was proving to be an emotional labour that I was starting to crack under. The differing ideas of professionalism also blurred this line even further for me because this led to taking on the toll of figuring out what was expected of me at work. It was comforting to see that “emotions being difficult to manage” (Bowles, 2018) was acknowledged in this week’s content. I have found the most useful way to combat these internal pressures (that mainly come from within) is to talk to my coworkers and communicate expectations because at the end of the day, we aren’t saving lives, we are all trying to accomplish the same task. Sometimes it’s not about taking all the pressure we feel off of ourselves, but having that pressure respected and acknowledged that matters.