Did you ever want to take a break from work? That’s the endpoint where retirement is considered. Nobody should entertain that without having a higher purpose to fill the void. No, when you take breaks at work or elsewhere, you should take breaks from what drains you the most. I know this sounds like old fart talk, but work was murder today. I could not make or find time to sort newly delivered merchandise since I was on the register longer than usual. Two days before, everything went swimmingly because I wasn’t even the name on the shift or taking heat as the bottom-line of sales.
The section of that DISC program I occupy is the exact opposite of Karlyn Borysenko, who is a hard D like Donald Trump. Lest you should know, DISC is a personality profile where D is a demanding, bombastic extrovert. Good for them. Society drains me. Far more illogical variables to process than what is seen as polite. Not that I can’t excel, but prolonged, sustained, constant and unrelenting public contact (as a long line of customers and hitting the bell can’t summon a co-worker) shrivels me to a stack of dimes.
So, when taking breaks, I translate the goal as “What am I taking a break from?” and spend the greater part of a 15-minute official break with a drink in my hand and back-stock in the other. I literally say, “no cashiering,” and sort through or clean things without having to acknowledge other people (I will out of courtesy and per the explicit requirements of the job) so the others won’t be puzzled or bothered by things that fly under the radar over the course of a shift. This extends into official lunch breaks.
Today, however, was different. I could not sneak some work into the lunch break and ordered two pizza slices instead of one. Normally, I’m fine with one. Why is that? Well, the whole draining thing–your metabolism struggles to stay ahead of your overextended neurons. While the therapy blogs handwave this condition of introversion as a state of being more than a weakness to overcome, I theorize that they do so purely to put their readers at ease.
No, thank you. Tell it like it is: this condition fucking sucks.
And it sucks because it’s necessary. I understand the extroverts thrive in a social environment and are actually very effective behind the register, not for the thoroughness but for the power to keep it tight with a bad customer or, worse, with a plethora of mistakes that only come from dragging too long. Yet, the approach of an introvert–namely, levels of borderline precognizant observation and jurisprudence we often simultaneously devalue and pine for in the service sector–has a number of uses.
The best solution is to entertain both and make sure everyone at least knows how and can run a register. You have a bunch of workers who have the same kind of stat sheet but are not separated by class and are proficient and efficient in the situations in which they’ve been trained. If an introvert ends up on the roster and proves to be far more valuable behind the scenes than in stage center, roll with it. The point of having people whose intensity of intuition outstrips the chatterboxes in the room is to prevent tribes from getting incinerated by an out-of-control bonfire that at least one person had smelled before it drew too near.