Bee's Sermons: Lessons I learned from a tearoom.

Most people are excited to turn thirteen in order to run riot and be allowed new freedoms. I was excited to turn thirteen so that I could get my first job. 

I started my “career”  at the village tearoom, initially just on Sundays between 12-4, and was paid the mighty sum for ￡2.50 per hour and I loved it. 

I couldn’t get over the fact that you could give up something as simple as your time, and in exchange someone would give you actual money for it. This whole experience was incredibly formative for me and whilst I will forever be able to change a coffee filter in under 15 seconds, and tell you all the ingredients in a date slice, there were some more useful lessons too:

1. The dishwasher is sometimes the best role in the business. 

Okay you might have to stick with me here. The “pot wash” role when I started seemed so boring. I didn’t want to just manage the two dishwashers running and put endless stacks of cakey plates away, I wanted to be out front where the real action was! I couldn’t understand why Kay, who was 19 and so very much cooler than me (she was allowed to use the till!) always wanted to swap to get back there. 

It turns out, chasing the ladder for responsibility isn’t always as glamorous as it seems; you can move up and out but ultimately the easier and more rhythmic jobs that you do at the beginning, are something you yearn for after a time. I see it now with many of my friends who are moving into Marketing Director roles, they get fed up that someone else gets to do all the “doing” whilst they have to sit back and set direction. It might not feel like it at the time, but getting to be the dishwasher means you get all the advantages and none of the pressure- simplicity is a blessing. 

2. Get a reputation as an early bird and no one will ever question your commitment again. 

I lived a fifteen minute walk from the tearoom. I left half an hour for that walk every time. I have a chronic earliness problem as it is, exacerbated by years in a military family- but I probably worked an extra 25 hours a year from being early for work in my time at the tearoom. It was a little thing, and it was incredibly foolish as I was paid by the hour, but actually people innately trusted me to be on time after a while, and it meant they also viewed me as responsible for other things, whether it was handling money, or locking up. One of my best friends gets to work at 7:30 every morning (just in time to beat the next first person in) and everyone knows him as the guy who gets in super early. No one will ever question his commitment to work, because he’s first at his desk. It’s irrelevant that for the first hour of the day he drinks coffee and watches youtube, because it comes up in his review every year. 

3. Don’t be a boss that takes tips. 

On Saturdays, the owner (lets call her Sandra) used to “work” with us. She used to take a few orders, chat with some customers and generally get in the way, but fine, she was the boss. The end of the day would come, she would go over to the till (always desperate to see how much she’d made) and then she would work out our cash salary and put it in little piles for us to collect. All fine. BUT THEN, she would go to the little saucer which held our tips for the day and she would count it all out and split it out between everyone that was working that day- INCLUDING HERSELF. So I was 14, making ￡3 an hour, would work 9 hours on a saturday, and she would make all the money from the tea room, “work” perhaps five hours and then take her split of the ￡18 or so that we had collected that day. It has always stuck with me. It annoys me now, just writing about it. This has been mirrored in the actions of countless bosses that I have worked with since; whether it's the boss that goes to the meeting “on your behalf, with your idea”, the one that doesn’t let bonuses’ trickle down to the team, takes credit for a document, or just downright doesn’t share. I have endeavoured to remember Sandra, and the way that tip sharing made me feel - and I hope I'm never going to imitate that behaviour. 

4. Write it down. 

It will shock no one to know that I was a cocky fourteen year old, certain even then that I was destined for greatness, I didn’t need these peasant like notepads to take orders- my mind was huge and capable of remembering all manner of cream tea combinations. How wrong I was. 

Getting an order wrong caused endless aggravation for the team, the customer, the boss, and for me, and all because I didn’t think I needed a pen and paper. I viewed having to write everything down as inferior, but actually it just meant I lost important information. The same is true now almost twenty years later. I take notes on everything, I don’t want to be that person that has to ask what was said in the meeting, and I am hugely offended by any team member of mine or mentee that shows up to a session without writing anything down- either you aren’t viewing anything I say as interesting or relevant, or you are too cocky and think you will remember it anyway. 

5. Work outside where possible. 

Summer would come around, the tearoom would be heaving with those seeking Dorset ice-cream and cold drinks and we would all stare longingly at the sunshine. Getting to the tables outside was a faff because the door had a low handle and Sandra demanded it was kept shut because she “wasn’t paying for the air conditioning outside!”, but it took me too long to work out that I should always be volunteering to look after the outside tables because that sun was irreplaceably good for my soul. Years later when I was at P&G I learned the value of the post lunch “walk around” which involved walking the long way back to your desk via an outside route, a rare treat in the Brooklands industrial site. It's as simple as that, go outside every now and again. It's good for you. 

It might be twenty years ago (nearly) but I still remember all of these lessons in a way that I hope has carried on in my career. 

Sadly, a lot of the other lessons I learned during this time have been less beneficial in the long run: Cream goes first not jam, always ask for extra hot water with your tea, don’t wear tights when waitressing in an old building (snags) and never ever hide your phone number under the egg mayonnaise sandwich of the boy you fancy from the garden centre.