Phone Anxiety

Surely it isn't normal for someone to put off making a phone call for over a month, simply because they HATE making phone calls. Yet, that is the situation I am (was) in, even though the phone call was pretty important (Student Finance had messed up big time). Every time I thought about making the phone call, I pictured myself stumbling over my words and somehow ending up owing Student Finance £1million, just because I'd phrased something wrongly.

I'm a person of nervous disposition as it is, suffering from anxiety for most of my life (although, isn't everyone nowadays?), but I especially hate speaking on the phone. Being a "worrier", I always think about the worst outcomes of a situations, so mentally planned out what could go wrong with making this phone call:

1. You can't see their facial expressions, so don't know how they are reacting/if they are joking

2. They could have an accent/could be muffled through the connection, so you can't understand them, leading to numerously asking them to repeat themselves, which could cause them to think you are rude or unintelligent

3. You could forget something important and only remember after you have hung up

4. You could lose connection and have to go through the whole process again

I decided that I seriously needed to motivate myself to make this phone call, as it was so important, so I decided that I would only allow myself the treat of driving home and spending this weekend with my family if I at least attempted to make the phone call. I made a list of everything I needed to say (not down to the last word, I didn't want to sound robotic), including important dates and the data I needed to discuss with them. I then placed the list to the side of my desk and selectively "forgot" about it until the next day (today).

Writing the phone number I had to call down in the margins of my list, I proceeded to type the numbers in to my phone, trying to switch off the alarm bells ringing in my brain as I pressed the "call" button. After four attempts of not getting through to the number, I began to get angry. I psyched myself up for this for over a month, and they don't even have the courtesy not to be engaged. Then I realised I had written the number down wrongly.

Mentally hating myself, I then called the CORRECT number. The dial tone seemed to last hours, before I was put through to a "robot" asking me to press numbers for different options, or to hold to be put through to someone at the call centre. As my problems were numerous and particular, I had to wait to be put through to someone. The line buzzed. "Hello, Student Finance, how can I help you?" Oh God, he has an accent. Scottish though, my favourite of the accents. At least he was understandable; his accent wasn't heavy. Using my list, I was able to forget a percentage of my anxiety driven worst-scenario thoughts. I made it through the important questions, although saying the wrong date twice, even though it was written in front of me, and forgetting how to count when asked for the sixth letter of my "secret phrase".

When I was put on hold (for a very short time, so congrats Student Finance call centre) the music jarred my ears. It sounded like a cross between the music you would find in a tense scene in an action film and terrible 8bit music radiating from an ancient Atari game. It was at this point I realised I had been shaking and sweating for the entire phone call so far. The music ended abruptly and "Ben" picked up the phone with a "Hello?" that contrasted a number of decibels quieter than the hold music and he had to repeat himself before I realised he was talking.

I got through the phone call although, guess what? They have to talk to a different department and are calling me back tomorrow. So I have to go through all of it again! However, I am proud of myself for finally making the call, and I realise that the people on the other end of the line are understanding and do this for a living. They listen to hundreds of people a day, some probably just as reluctant to speak on the phone as I was. So, tomorrow I will try to be more confident as I speak. Now I just have to overcome the anxiety of waiting around all day for the phone to ring. Sigh.

Cheap Alternative Date Ideas

So, I don't know if you've heard, but Valentine's Day is coming up. Not noticed the endless advertisements and self-pitying Facebook posts yet? Lucky you. All reservations at your favourite restaurant taken, or just can't stand the forced atmosphere a cinema date creates? For those of you who have a "special someone" this Valentine's Day, or for those who just want to do something cool with your friends where you won't run in to doe-eyed couples, here are a few alternative ideas to the typical Valentine's Day date.

1. ARCADE

Not the most romantic place in the world, I hear you say? Back in the times where people had to leave their house to play games, the arcade was a choice destination to take a date. What's better than embarrassing your date by defeating them terribly at a fun videogame? No one can remain uptight while sitting in a plastic car playing Mario Kart. Even if you aren't too good at videogames, there are games that don't involve much skill, like "Whack-a-Mole" and endless 2p machines. Your relationship will be strengthened through games involving teamwork, and it's a good way to see how your significant other behaves in the face of defeat. If you are in the early stages of a relationship, the arcade sure beats the awkwardness of a cinema date and at least you can win prizes out of it. You could do the stereotypical thing of winning your partner a giant toy out of the crane machine or, if you are living in real life and the crane machine never lets you win, you could win a bunch of tickets from an easy game and save up to buy a couple of water pistols out of the prize shop. 

Best time of day: 6 p.m. - avoids the busy times with lots of kids and you could easily grab a romantic meal after

2. PICNIC

February isn't the best time of the year for this date, but hey, we might get lucky and 14th February 2015 might break heatwave records? Going on a picnic can be what you make of it, it gives you the opportunity to actually MAKE CONVERSATION with your date. You could bring activities or games with you if you feel it may get awkward. Find somewhere quiet with great scenery for best results. This date is effortless, but does take some pre-planning. Make sure everyone knows what food they are bringing, or if you are providing all of the food, make sure it is something you both like and something that will fill you both up. Pasta and sandwiches are a good call, and maybe bring something sweet along too (but from experience, strawberries and cream on a windy day is a bad idea).

Best time of day: depends on the mood you want to create (and weather), midday for a relaxed, fun atmosphere, evening for a romantic date, maybe bring candles. If bad weather, indoor picnics can be just as good.

3. WALK

Exercise?! In this day and age?! If you live in a particularly picturesque part of the country, going for a walk with your date can be a great idea. Even if you don't, just walking around your local town can be just as good. Maybe be tourists for a day? Going for a walk with your date can be a great way to discover beautiful parts of the world that you didn't know existed, right near to where you live. Maybe stop for a rest on a bench by a river? Go into a cafe you never even noticed was there. Again, this is a great way to talk to your date and find out more about them. Best yet-decide you don't like them? There's no schedule to this date, you can leave anytime with any excuse.

Best time of day: Mid-morning as it's still light so there's less chance of getting lost, or having to walk home in the dark. You can always bring along a picnic too!

4. FILM MARATHON

You reeeaallyyyy don't want to go to a cinema full of couples displaying uncomfortable levels of PDA and anyway, cinema tickets are extortionate nowadays. Yet you still want to watch films with the one you love. Organise a day where you both are free for a significant number of hours. Make a list of the films you both want to watch. Bring a load of snacks and cushions, close the curtains, maybe make a projector, and you have an easy date-you don't have to move! A range of genres is the best option, otherwise you can get a bit bored and begin to crave the outside world. Plus, you can see what your partner's tastes are and see if they are generous enough to watch a film that you love but they find terrible.

Best time of day: Doesn't matter, you won't be seeing sunlight anyway.

5. SEASIDE

Unfortunately, where I live at university is much further from any beaches than where I live away from university. If you are lucky enough to live within a reasonable distance from the seaside, go! It's a great date, even if it's cold. Warm weather means you can go paddling (it's still February, we're not quite swimming yet!), you can sit and watch the waves and yes, talk. If the weather isn't particularly tropical, you can still look around the quirky shops that exist by the sea. Laugh at the funny tourist shops that sell rude postcards and "I love London" t-shirts when you're miles from London. Look at all the different gemstones and fossils in those funny shops. Casually brush your partners hand as you pick a shell up to admire it. Great! Make sure you wear enough layers though, as the beach is definitely the coldest place in the universe.
Best time of day: Mid-morning to mid-afternoon, the shops will be open 

These ideas have all been tried and tested by me and I definitely enjoyed them all! While the typical "romantic" date of dinner and a film is fine by me, it's not the most original idea, and on Valentine's Day you won't be able to move in a restaurant or cinema without bumping in to a couple on a date. If cinema dates make you feel awkward, good! The best way to cement a relationship is talking to your date and finding out about them. Going on dates to the cinema restricts this-even watching films at home is better than the cinema, as no one will tell you to be quiet and you can make it your own. Plus, coming up with a successful alternative idea for a date will be much appreciated, as your date will know you are thinking of them and makes you stand out from the rest of those uncreative restaurant and cinema dates.

 Disclaimer: some of these ideas may not be great for a first date, but then, why is your first date on Valentine's Day? A lot to live up to for a first date.

WARNING This Post Contains Cute Puppy Photos

Having a pet definitely changes your life for the better. After going about quite a few years without a dog (I have had two dogs before), in September last year my family decided it was time to get one.

 It took so long because the last dog we had was a border collie; an absolute working dog to its core. This didn't end so well, because we didn't have enough time in the day to walk her as much as she needed (which was a lot!). This meant that she used to tunnel out of our back garden, which backed on to the woods, and we would have to spend countless evenings running around the woods looking for her. My parents decided it would be unfair on her if we kept her, as we could not give her the attention she deserved. The day they tried to take her to the Battersea dog's home, I remember running up my street with no shoes on, with the dog in tow, saying to my parents that I would look after her on my own. I was a dramatic child, but I had grown so attached to the dog that I couldn't imagine life without her.

The dog we had previously, my parents had owned before I was born, so I grew up around her. This was useful, as I grew up not being scared of animals and made friends with my neighbor because ours mums walked their dogs together. This dog died of old age when I was relatively young, but I don't think I understood the concept of death yet. This is because, when we buried the dog's ashes in the garden, we marked the grave with a bamboo stick, through which I used to drop spaghetti to "feed" the dog.

Schnoodle puppy

My mum was determined to do her research on types of dog this time around, so that we didn't end up with a dog that didn't suit our lifestyle. While at first, my mum and sister wanted to get a schnoodle (a cross between a schnauzer and a poodle), I wasn't so sure. It turned out that such breeds were quite rare in the area in which we lived. In fact, it was very difficult to find anything that wasn't a Staffordshire terrier, which probably shows how rough the area I live in is. Eventually, we decided that we liked the look of spaniels, specifically cocker spaniels rather than their lively springer counterparts. 

After endless Google searching we found a couple of spaniels we liked. The first time we actually went to a seller's house, they were very convincing. They had previous experience with breeding their dog and the puppies were unbarably cute. However, when looking at the situation again, the puppies were locked in a cage on top of a bin, outside in the heat, with no water, and a large portion of the garden "where the mother dog lived" was blocked from view and we weren't allowed to go back there. We resolved that, while we felt sorry for the puppies, we had in fact just visited a puppy farm and were not going to encourage this, so didn't buy from them.

Puppy farms are regarded as cruel by a lot of people because dogs are used for breeding again and again and the breeders often have little regard for the dog's health. It is very easy to not realise that you are buying from a puppy farm because they hide it well. WHen selling multiple puppies from the same litter, they usually advertise the puppies seperately and occasionally lie about when different puppies are born. The best way to tell whether or not an online advertisement is a puppy farm is by looking to see if any different advertisements are from the same location or have the same contact details. You could ask how many litters the mother has had before, although of course, the seller could lie.

Finally, we found a local seller who seemed safe, so we went to visit them. There was only one puppy left when we got there. She was very small, very scared and quite tired. When we picked her up, she quivered so much I was scared. We all were so endeared to her, even though she seemed of a dangerously nervous disposition. We all turned to look at my dad, who would be paying for her, and of course he agreed. She shivered in the car the whole way home.

When we got home, we expected the puppy to be excited to explore her new environment, but she just laid down and looked sorry for herself. She let you stroke her, she didn't back away from you, but she didn't seem thrilled to be stroked either. We were worried when she didn't leave the corner of the room all day, but left her to it to settle in by herself. The next few days she mostly spent asleep. She didn't cry like the other dog did when we first got it. She just seemed sad in the way she looked at you. It made us feel guilty, but obviously it wasn't really our fault she had been separated from her siblings.

Finally she seemed to perk up a bit, actually moving from her corner. She was scared of going through doorways for some bizarre reason, so if we wanted her in the living room with us, we had to pick her up and carry her. The first time she actually seemed interested in exploring is when we took her to the vets the first time. She obviously smelt the familar smell of dogs, and actually wagged her tail. Hurrah, we haven't got the saddest dog in the universe! It's funny, most pets hate going to the vets, but so far, my dog loves it!

 

 

Tiny puppy

She has grown a lot!

 After the trip to the vets and a couple of weeks of absolute sleepiness (apparently normal for puppies, as they're like babies and are doing the majority of growing at this age), she finally started acting like a stereotypical puppy. She now plays with her toys, throwing them up in the air and trying to catch them before they hit the ground. She always loves meeting people, often dragging me halfway across the park to go and see someone else out for a walk. As she was still refining her senses at a young age, she would often do really stupid and hilarious things, like run into cabinet doors or fall on her face after jumping over something. She still sometimes makes funny noises to herself, as if she is trying to talk like a person. She also steals underwear and socks off of radiators.

Making friends with other dogs

 

Being an elf at Christmas

She barely fits on my lap now!

She is now about seven months old, and now that I am at university, I miss her. I might drive the two and a bit hours soon, just to go and see her. I am absolutely her favourite, as I spent the majority of time with her (and I let her on my lap on the sofa, which she isn't supposed to do). She definitely has developed a personality and I am so glad of the progress whe has made from the whimpering little thing she once was.

Let Me Take a Selfie

We live in a world where people live more for documenting things than living in the moment. You can't go to a concert and have a clear view to the stage nowadays because people are holding their phones in the air recording it. I don't see why; their footage is always muffled, with the only clear sound being their terrible singing along, and they can't be fully immersed in what is happening in front of them because they are wary of how it may appear on film.

In some ways, this culture can have its benefits. Many of the photographs we see in news articles are captured by someone in the moment who wanted to document their experience. Is it right, however, for people's first reaction in an emergency to be reaching for their phones to take a picture? This could not only be seen as insensitive, but could also put the person taking the photograph in danger.

 

If I can't enjoy a night out with friends without being attacked to join "selfies" (worst word in human existance), I'd rather just stay in. Being forced to stand awkwardly while twelve different pictures are taken is not my idea of fun. You can never get away with just one photograph too: "I look fat, can we take it again", "I wasn't ready", "Now one with a silly face". Can't we just sit and talk about what's happening in our lives? Also, I get disconcerted when people take selfies right in front of my face, because I get scared they are taking a picture of me.

It's all about perpetuating the image of ourselves on social media; we always look happy, we're always out, look who we're out with now! People external to the situation will look at the photographs and feel a sense of jealousy that they're missing out on the fun that we seem to be portraying. However, the truth is the complete opposite. You can usually judge that someone has had a terrible night out from the sheer amount of photographs taken.

Sometimes, of course, taking photographs to remember a certain time has great semtimental value. Holidays, weddings, particularly momentous occasions should warrant documentation, I'll admit. My issue is when photographs are taken because "I look good today", basically used to brag about your wonderful life to people you barely know. I like the idea of lockets. A single photograph, of sentimental value and only seen by the wearer.

Trivial News

The internet has caused news stories to progress from paper to bytes, making it more accessible and readily available. Simply introduce your story with a click-bait title, and watch the view count rise. However, with this increase in demand for news arguably comes a decline in the quality of stories selected as "newsworthy".

Now, whether you find any of the stories printed in The Daily Mail as "news", is another story, but I at least feel articles should have some kind of point to them. Note this story which popped up on my Facebook page today, depicting a member of the Kardashian-Jenner clan shockingly...wearing a wig during a photo-shoot. While I don't "keep up" with the Kardashians, as much as keep them at arm's length, for some reason they are always newsworthy. I just can't fathom how someone spent the time to sit down and write an article on the hairstyle or shade of lipstick someone wore during a photo-shoot, without wanting to seriously think about the life choices they were making.

The Daily Mail in particular has been criticised on its "sidebar of shame": the links to trivial stories down the side of their webpage, often reducing women to objects, and making a commentary on outfits they are wearing, or body shaming them. I don't understand what these stories achieve, apart from making catty women feel good about themselves and making a fat white man very rich. Some magazines elevate celebrities into ethereal beings, entirely Photoshopped, with diet tips such as existing on air alone. This is bad enough, but is it better to do the opposite, and bully celebrities so that the average Joe can feel better about their sad existence?

Some would say that it is better, as it shows how Photoshopped images are so unrealistic compared to a picture of the same celebrity with no Photoshop. This can help vulnerable young people know the difference and learn how to be healthy. Some celebrities, such as Lorde even compared photos of herself pre and post Photoshop to show how she thinks "flaws are ok".

However, sometimes the articles are simply about how so-and-so has cellulite, with no actual point to the story. I don't know who the people are who look through photographs and jump off their chair with a "Eureka!" moment when they see a flaw, but I wouldn't like to meet them. Not to mention the fact that 99 per cent of these stories are about women. On a similar thread, a recent study shows that, while men on magazine covers are portrayed simply as themselves, women are usually hyper sexualized. This isn't only in men's magazines, but across the board.

I could go on and on about patriarchy in the media, or I could end on the fact that I think stories that are described as "news" should be slightly more substantial than whether a person has gained a few pounds. And of course a celebrity is going to wear a provocative outfit if they know it will be reported on! Maybe don't take the bait next time, and we won't feed this culture of people being famous for no reason.

This programme reveals how celebrities are able to manipulate the media in spinning stories about them to feed their fame, without them having to achieve anything particularly substantial. It is available for a limited time here.

What are you doing?!

 

I've never really known what the end goal is. Plenty of people I know are studying for very niche degrees, which are a direct route to a particular job. Studying English Literature has to be the biggest outcry that I don't know what I'm working towards.

I know people who have known what they want to do with their lives since they were five years old and have stuck with it to this day. People who make a plan and stick with it are the type of people I admire. They seem to have it all together. I just feel like the clock is ticking down to the day where I have to make a sudden choice, and be resolved to it forever after. I am a serial worrier and doubt decisions I make about lunch, never mind massive life-changing decisions. That's why it took me a whole year of uni before I left and changed courses.

Majestic as hell

When I was four, I wanted to be a mermaid. This was a perfectly legitimate life goal at that point. I was working towards it in the form of taking swimming classes and swotting up by watching The Little Mermaid ten thousand times a week. I couldn't wait until I was older and could dye my hair the pillar box hue that seemed to naturally sprout from Ariel's head. I still love the sea.

As I grew older, I decided a "proper" profession would be to become a vet. I liked animals and science (well, I liked making jelly in primary school, which was what the science lessons basically consisted of). It was going well, I had it sorted. Then I watched some kind of animal hospital programme, where a bovine vet was called out to a medical emergency on some remote farm. Never will I get the image of this poor woman shoving her entire arm inside a cow's rear end out of my head. Thus ended that dream. Interestingly, a friend of mine is actually in the process of training to be a vet and as part of her recent work experience, she also had the pleasure of reaching into a cow's backside. So, nice save, Katherine!

I reached secondary school with no plans of looking to the future, after being let down by Disney and cow butts. I pushed through school, got decent grades and had to make the decision about what I would study at university. It was the done thing to go to university and anyone considering other options was put on a kind of watch-list by the teachers, which I suppose is good as they we making sure you didn't "throw away your education" or something. I chose psychology, I'm not sure why; it was interesting I suppose? The psychology programme at university included a module on possible career outcomes at the end of the course. None of them massively caught my imagination; not even the cat counsellor, who gave us a two hour lecture on how it was an expanding field full of adventure. She seemed unhealthily obsessed with cats.

I left that course to follow my one true calling; English Literature. I had always been a bookworm, up until I discovered the magic of YouTube and watching countless hours of meaningless videos on the internet. University is forcing me to sit down with a book every now and again, which is what I wanted to get back to anyway. At least now I am studying a subject with broad outcomes, which could springboard me into unchartered territory. 

Maybe it's a good thing that I don't know what to do with myself. There's a quote from someone, maybe one of my teachers even said it, that was something like "The most interesting 40 year olds I know, still don't know what they want to be when they grow up". I guess that makes my mum interesting, as she tells me all the time she doesn't know what she wants to do. Getting all philosophical here, maybe life isn't about aiming towards something, because when you get there, what else is there? For now, I'll just bumble my way through life, until something shiny catches my eye.

Working in Fast Food

If you did badly in school, the threat was that you'd end up working in a fast food restaurant. However, when I found myself working in such an establishment last year (not related to doing badly in school), I realised that there are far worse career prospects in the world. After searching for a job for no less than three years (not counting a brief stint as a Christmas elf) I received a call to an interview in a fast food branch within one of the largest shopping centres in the country. After being successful in the interview, I embarked on a seven month learning curve in to the world of fast food.

The most daunting moment was when my trainer had left me alone on the till for the first time. Customers would approach as normal and order their food, unaware of my inexperience, wondering why it was taking me so long to press a few buttons. What customers don't see is the labyrinthian screen in front of crew members, with every possible decision a customer could make mapped out in front of them. Furthermore, crew members are required to be extremely enthusiastic, outgoing people; greeting customers like old friends. This is difficult in the early stages, as it is really easy to be terrified of customers, as they could potentially make life extremely difficult for you.

After overcoming shyness and memorising the till, the next step in the journey is learning how to handle difficult customer situations. These situations fall within the spectrum of "My chips were too cold!" to customers literally throwing their food in your face and security needing to be called. While serving customers sub-par food is of course unacceptable, usually these situations can be resolved easily. However, now and again, there will be customers who find it unfathomable that mistakes are made, and these customers and the ones who make you feel that it's time to call a manager over to deal with.

Throughout a person's time working in fast food, they will learn that there are different types of customer, and it is usually easy to pigeonhole customers into a certain bracket to give them the service that would suit them best. For example, businessmen, or people who seem to be in a general hurry, probably don't want to stop and have a conversation before they order their food. Teenagers are likely to want to know what special offers are available. People with children may want to know what toys are available in children's meals and it is always nice to interact with the children as well, as it means they too are having a positive experience.

Everyone's favourite customers are the older "regulars". They will come about four to five days out of the week, and usually will only order coffee. My favourite regular was a man with a glorious moustache, who always ordered black coffee with four extra milks. We also had a customer coined "Latte Lady", for the obvious reason. These customers are always lovely, and will guarantee to perk up your day with conversation or just being happy that you remember their order.

The most terrifying customers (aside from rude customers) have to be potential "Gap Busters". This is the term used for customers who are essentially secret shoppers, who visit the establishment to check that it is being run to standard. They will note down whether you greet them properly, whether their food is excellent, whether everything looks clean (including you, the crew member), and whether you part with a farewell. The worst part is that they could be anyone; they are rarely obvious, and the only way to tell if the person is a potential Gap Buster is that they will only order certain items and only come during certain periods of the day. As soon as you hear what a potential Gap Buster orders, your heart will race and you run to tell a manager and kitchen, to make sure everything is perfect. Not that everything isn't perfect anyway, of course. 

There were a few strange requests from customers during my experience. The amount of "I want a PLAIN hamburger, with NOTHING on it, not even ketchup or mustard" I heard was ridiculous (in future, just ask for a plain hamburger, I can guess for myself what that entails). Another favourite order was a cheeseburger without cheese (so, a hamburger?). Some people would ask for what was essentially just a cheese sandwich. Luckily, I have yet to serve a customer who had read about the legendary "secret menu", and tries to order something I have never heard of. Just a pro-tip, the "secret menu", to my knowledge, doesn't exist in England. Many, if not, all of the negative rumours about fast food restaurants are usually about American fast food restaurants. In England, our restaurant used well-sourced produced and disclaimed all that was in their food on their website.

One of my pet peeves when working in fast food is that people thought I was stupid. Some customers would talk very slowly when ordering, particularly if they had any special orders. Near the start of my working in the restaurant, a customer told me that their friend hadn't managed to get an interview there because they were "too clever and had gone to a Grammar school". I happily informed the customer (probably cheekily), that I had gone to a Grammar school and was also at university, along with the majority of my fellow staff. Just because you work somewhere does not mean you can't get a job somewhere else, you may just enjoy your job, know that you're good at it and feel comfortable in that environment.

Where I worked, there were plenty of opportunities to better yourself, whether that was through the Apprenticeship scheme which, on completion, gained a person the equivalent of five A*-C GCSEs, or through the charity fundraisers that occasionally cropped up. Completing training in different areas was always encouraged so that you could be promoted. This meant that you could learn Health and Safety both with food and generally within the workplace, good service techniques, how to prepare different food and cleanliness practices.

Working in fast food was extremely stressful at times, particularly as my establishment was within one of the largest shopping centres in the country, and I worked from June to January, covering both the summer holidays and the Christmas holidays. During these times, queues would run to the back walls of the store and were more like mobs than "queues". You wouldn't be able to have a conversation with these people, as they were already complaining that they'd been waiting ages, and you were rarely met with a friendly demeanour. There would be a high growth of customer complaints during this period, as the kitchen were under intense stress to make special orders on top of making sure they hadn't run out of the regular food. Even when there was no one to serve, "Leaning is cleaning!" so you would wipe down surfaces etc.

The best part of the job has to be the people you work with. As you're all in a high stress environment, everyone usually pulls together as a team and won't let you struggle on your own. Everyone is eventually trained both for front counter and in the kitchen, so while it is easy to shout at the kitchen for being slow when you are on front counter, you will eventually learn that it isn't so easy being in their shoes. Everyone develops a sense of humour, so that you can laugh at awful situations like accidentally spilling a large fizzy drink on a customer (while apologising of course!). It makes life far easier than if you just panic. It's a job that makes you much braver, so that you can confront complete strangers with ease.