My first and only serious, long term job was that of a gas station attendant for Safeway. Everyday was a trial, from dealing with malfunctioning gas pumps and computers to being the focal point of rage of countless rude customers. Through the years I picked up a few habits and tricks that made the job a little more bearable, but never what I could call enjoyable.
My primary responsibilities were taking the customers money and setting it on their pump, but when I was alone, which was often, my workload expanded to everything you could think of. If someone spilled a gallon of gas at 10:30 at night while there was a hefty line of customers, I'd have a half dozen pair of eyes glaring at me, waiting, while I made sure we didn't all die and cleaned up the gas.
The upside of working alone and unsupervised in a sound proof box was my freedom to plug in a music player to the built in computer speakers, and freedom to yell obscenities at the top of my lungs when there were no customers at the window. I'm sure I looked quite insane from the outside looking in, and maybe I was, but the chance to let some steam off without letting it build up allowed me to continue working without letting it out on a customer.
During my time at Safeway I feel I developed some extreme patience when dealing with people, especially unreasonable people. I can definitely see patience being a useful tool to have in the IT field, and I'll certainly use it in my internship. The most important lesson I learned from working there was that I deserved better and that no one should settle for a job where you're undervalued.
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