I work in the food service industry and specifically I manage people who manage dining contracts at institutions of higher education. On the surface, my industry seems simple. I worked for someone once who said "at the end of the day it is really just about serving hamburgers and fries". But in reality it is a very complex business where my day can be interwoven with discussions about multi-million dollar deals, an occasional labor issue, customer and client satisfaction challenges, and the development of strategic and tactical planning, and less challenging issues like cold oatmeal and fruit flies.
What has a tendency to make the day-to-day dealings of my job more difficult at times is that we work for crazy people. It is my believe that college campuses are islands of insanity, where insane people are hired and then allowed to thrive. I have a client who expect's the leaves falling from the trees in October to be raked up as they hit the ground (I thought I was anal, but more about that in a minute); I have a client who pays us to run the business but then wants to be involved in every decision right down to the font style that we put on our menus; and I have a client who bases personel decisions not on experience or education but on looks and age. One would think that college campuses are bastions of political correctness but mostly they are not.
I like my work most days and other than the occasional run-in with insanity, it is satisfying. The stress in my work comes mostly from the unknown. Not knowing when the call will come-in because my manager went off the deep-end at an event and threatened to kill the host; or the call from a client who has decided after a long partnership to take proposals from our compeitors because they feel we make too much profit, I guess in reality I put out fires for a living!
On average a fire starts for me almost once a week and they are usually complicated enough to take several days or weeks to snuff out. I did not set-out in the business to put out fires and I generally don't like doing it. I know people who do like it and in fact they thrive on it. I think these are the same people who like anarchy and find comfort in messes. I am of the mindset that fires mean that someone has made a significant error and since that someone invaribly works for me, I made the error. My desire to avoid failure outweighs everything about me and many would say that I am anal. I like neatness and order and I expect everyone around me to be neat and orderly. I wash my driveway; I will remow the lawn if my kids mow it and the lines are crooked; I refold the towels that are folded incorrectly before putting them away; I park and repark my car until it looks like I am positioned in the middle of the white lines; When I play golf, the area around where I am hitting the ball must be clean, I pick-up broken golf tees, leaves, twigs, wrappers, before I hit; I may have issues!
I am getting better though, a dirty sneaker on the garage floor no longer sends me over the edge and I avoid looking into my kids bedrooms all toghether. It's dealing with the stress of all this that has previously always led me to food. In fact as I write this stuff now, I keep thinking "man I could really go for a Pizza" even though I just had lunch.
This past weekend would have historically been a food-free-for-all event for me. I had a long week last week with tons of issues and I have a stressful schedule this week. My normal Friday night mindset on these occassions has been that I work very hard and deserve to have a nice meal (or meals), I owe this to myself! Then as you can imagine, one bad meal leads to more bad meals, which lead to other bad health decisions, like two days of aggressive couch sitting. This unsettled healthless period ends only when I am able to get it under control again. I wonder what would happen if I never got control again! I can see the headline now "Man Shot Dead after 12-state Twinkie Massacre". But thankfully none of that happened this past weekend. I went to WW Saturday morning and my wife and I had a great weekend of good healthy decision making! I awoke this morning feeling very positive and alive! So I am off to gather my fire hose and helmet to tackle the week ahead!
