Reflection

In College Writing II, I believe that I did most or almost all of the work. I started off very strong and did all of my work. I would always post on my blog and would always read my peers blogs and respond to theirs as well. I noticed that with this last assignment however, I did not do much on the blog, and only posted once or twice about this paper. During this last assignment multiple things have been going on in my life effecting me rather in a negative way and I was honestly distracted from reflecting onto my blog and sharing my ideas and thoughts about it at the time. Other than that, I did all the work I had to and did multiple drafts for each assignment and had always posted on my blog about them and shared my ideas and thoughts about each assignment. I also tried to participate more and had shared my advertisement to the class when no one else would volunteer. Honestly, I never really participate but in this class I felt rather comfortable to put forth my opinion on that specific ad. I also participated in peer reviews and liked helping out others and having others help me out. I think this really did help out and it helped even more that everyone did do a peer review and was reliable to help you out. I did try my best on all of my assignments and I noticed that I had wrote a lot about ideas that had actually connected to me or had my interest. I had taken the semester off in the fall and when I came into this class I was motivated to do my best on every assignment and to do well in this class. Like I said before, I started off very strong and towards the end I noticed I was slacking a little. I did still try to do my best, but I know I could have done better and this last assignment. I know my head was not really focused these past three weeks due to other things appearing in my life, however I need to learn to still do my best in class no matter what is going on. For the future I learned that I should try my hardest no matter what and always do all of my work. I need to improve on my motivation towards the end of the semester and really need to stay focused throughout the entire class length and the entire semester. Another thing I need to improve on is maybe more participation. I am very shy and worry what others will think of my answers or my opinions, however this class made me feel more comfortable and I need to feel that way no matter what class I am in. Overall, I think I tried my best most of the time in this class and I did all of my work and turned everything in on time. I learned a lot from this class and will take what I have learned into my future classes.

New Assignment

So far with this assignment I have found all of my sources and have written a summary for each source. I also have done the introduction and conclusion. I am still working on putting all of them together and will be done with that soon. I did have difficulty starting this paper, however when I started to find sources and took time with it, the wheels started turning. I think the information I have found made me get more into this topic. Seeing the other kinds of advertisements PETA has done has thrown me more off than the one particular ad I had presented in class. Not all of their ads are negative, but the ones that are took it to the next level. They have compared animals being treated bad to the Holocaust and that right there says that they did something wrong. I am still putting touches in my paper and will post my draft tomorrow or Thursday.

Academic Article and Visual

While trying to look out for a visual for class I came across this specific photo and it made me stop and glance at it for a while. A few of my friends are actually vegan and I have nothing against it at all, people are able to chose what they want to eat and do in life. However, this photo, I believe, took things to far and is trying to show that all meat is bad for you. In the image it shows an over sized kid stuffing her face with a hamburger. First, this is not the only kind of meat there is out there and some meats are actually very healthy for you. Second, not every kid will go out every day eating hamburgers, yes obesity is growing gradually in America, but still, not everyone eats these meats on a daily basis. I understand people have different views and such on whether or not to eat meat, however this ad is more insulting than trying to change peoples views in a good way. The ad to me is very negative and I think that this negativity does not really help the point PeTA is trying to make. Once again, not against anyone who does not eat meat, just more against the way this ad portrays people who do consume meat.

Looking up academic sources, this journal had popped up several times within the different searches I had made. The journal basically is about a study of people eating chicken. They tested the people whom had consumed the chicken versus people who did not. They did the test and it showed that chicken is actually healthy for you and showed that there were better performances for all of the cognitive tests they had done. The results also showed that this chicken meat arises the promotion of attention and prefrontal cortex functions and is a healthy choice. I thought this article had fit in with my belief of this ad, showing that chicken, for example, is an actual healthy meat that people should consume. Not all meat is bad for you and will not "abuse your children".

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lewisu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=6&sid=cb76b087-46f7-40ff-af05-95b31bf152f6%40sessionmgr4004&hid=4107&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=a9h&AN=90241280

Assignment Reflection

After finally completing this assignment, I feel more confident in my writing skills. I really liked the time we had to spend on this assignment. I also felt that having workshops and peer editing were very helpful. Having three different people review my drafts had helped me a lot and had pointed out mistakes that I may not have seen editing it myself over and over again. Another thing that had lead to my paper being more successful were the sources that I had found to help support it throughout. It was a little difficult for me at first using the databases online and finding an academic article that had really fit into my paper. I do believe these make papers much stronger versus finding any ordinary website that is filled with a bunch of facts. However, once again, they are also challenges for me to find a accurate source. Many of the sources I find that are academically written sometimes are to hard to understand and go into so much detail that I easily get lost into what the purpose even is of that post. But, there are many academic sources out there and can be both a challenge and a win to find one that makes sense to you and really helps support your topic. I found this assignment hard at first, trying to think of a surprising topic, but after I found that topic things changed. I found a lot of sources that really had helped me make my paper and show that my topic needs more awareness due to the little surprise it may have on the public.

My Reflection

As I think about why I chose this topic to rant about I first thought of my daily life. I work 40 hours or more at my job every week and this is the one thing I have to go through almost every day that really gets to me. Obviously the members do not know that I go to school full time and also work so many hours a week and I am already stressed enough, but being completely rude to me for something that is not my fault is the last thing I need. Not trying to sound selfish there, no one deserves to be yelled at when you are doing your best, it is uncalled for. I notice right now I am going into a rant already, but like I said, this topic is one that is stuck to me. I could have picked several other rants and this one specific one may be common but it is one I can really go on and on about.
     The difference between my quick rant post and my public rant post, I did not change much. I notice that I went into more detail in different factors that contribute to why retail is hard instead of just the part in which customers are rude. I also added some personal stories of mine to support my rant even more and to show people what I usually go through on the daily. Apart from the customers being rude, I also added in how long of hours we actually work and how the pay really is not the best and how we always have to keep smiling no matter what. I did not try to strictly say that everyone is angry and I also wrote about how I know some people might just have had a bad day or maybe they lost someone during the week and just are depressed, I understand things happen. The article that I had found goes right along with my rant and I agree with all of the points it makes. I really hope people also read the article to get someone else's view of this subject as well and how difficult retail really could be.
     I feel as if I really got something out of this assignment. I enjoyed ranting about a specific topic because it was something that I actually cared about and something I had actually wanted to share with people. Sharing this with people, I hope they understand where I am coming from and will take a step back and appreciate those people they encounter working in retail. Writing about something you care about and have strong feelings about it a lot easier and I feel as if I got a lot out of it.

Retail is Easy Work? Many May Disagree.

     Honestly, when people say that working in retail is one of the easiest jobs… they obviously have never worked in retail before. I have been working in retail my whole life so far, and it is not a pretty sight most of the time. I always come home very stressed after work and most of the time, I am put into a bad mood. This is one the things that people say that really get to me because I work every week for 40 hours and those 40 hours I work unbelievably hard and those hours can be the worst hours of my life.
     I work at Sam’s Club in the café and I have seen and dealt with a lot of angry members there. I know many people could just be having an off day from something that happened before they took the trip to our store, but taking it out on other people is not necessary, but we have to deal with it. They could be the nicest people, but they tend to let their anger fly when it comes to the littlest things in our café. Let me give you an insight in what I deal with on the daily. One man had come in an ordered a slice of pizza, and when I gave him the slice I could tell he was not happy. He had looked up at me and literally yelled at me that he had never seen a slice so small before in a Sam’s Club. As always, retail workers are taught to keep a smile on their face and have to reply and apologize in the nicest tone even though that person could be chewing you apart and nothing is your fault. Back to the fun time, I had told him I could give him two slices and instead he ignored the offer and yelled at me to put a new one in. I did as he “requested” because of course the “customer is always right”. As the pizza came out we cut it perfectly even so that every slice was the same size. I called out the order and he then ripped it out of my hands and rolled his eyes screaming “Are you kidding me?!” He complained to the front desk about us and like usual we got yelled at. Our pizza is on display and you can see the slices before you order. He had looked at the pizza beforehand and then complained about it. This, to me at least, makes no sense, if he saw how “small” the piece was why did he order it? 
     This was not the worst case I have been through, many people will call you names you would not expect strangers to call you such as the “c” word or the “b” word. Now, we are not a five star restaurant, we are a café that sells all of our food for less than a dollar, not everything is going to be perfect but we do work hard to make sure it is. Along with getting yelled at half of the time you have to remember most of the associates here work 9 or more hour shifts and do not get paid the best of money. All of the hard work we do to satisfy the customers and half of them will ever appreciate it and just look down on us. The hours will drag and you have to keep your mindset to being a happy associate no matter what happens. This is very frustrating in the workplace because you cannot stand up for yourself or your coworkers, instead you have to let them complain and you have to apologize to them even though nothing you did was wrong. We sell hot dogs in the café and sometimes they take way too long to cook which drives the members insane. We put them in so that when the other side runs out the next side is ready to serve. In our policy we can only give out hot dogs until they hit 169 degrees. One day the hot dogs were not ready and have been taking a while to cook, this lady came up and asked for one and I had told her that they would be ready in around ten minutes…she went crazy. She started screaming at me that this is ridiculous and that I need to learn how to cook them right. I apologized to her and told her that we cannot sell them until they have hit a certain temperature. She said that I was making that up and she did not care if it was under that temperature. I tried explaining to her once again I could not do that for the sake of her getting sick due to it not being cooked and it was the company’s policy. She ran to our manager and was screaming at her about me saying that I was being rude and that I was being lazy and not making her a hot dog. I explained what was going on and the lady stormed off saying she was never coming here again. These hot dogs are a dollar and forty cents, I do not understand the point in yelling like an imbecile to a college student about a hot dog. My manager told me not to worry about members like that and to follow policy as I have been and to not let them bring you down. I took the advice, however one rude member could truly bring you down for the rest of the day. I am not saying in anyway there are not nice members, but most of the members I have dealt with are not the nicest. When you have a nice member, you will have conversation with them and it will really lighten the mood at work and you turn to your coworkers and say I wish every person was like that. People need to really stop and appreciate what these underpaid retail associates do to try to satisfy them. Yes, maybe some associates can be lazy or rude, but from my experience, no one is rude but the members and no matter what we maintain that smile that is painted on our faces.
     I have seen this one article online that is also a rant about working in retail. The title is "7 Reasons to Be Kind to Retail Workers." As I read through each of the seven reasons I could not help myself but compare my workplace with theirs. Every single detail they had wrote in this article I cringed at because they are all, sadly, true and yet again, very frustrating. Many of the points they have made I also have contributed in my own rant about this specific topic. What I also like about this article is that on the side there are various tweets you can read about the public’s experiences while working in retail and unfortunately many do not have good days on the job. Once again, no one is saying that everyone in the world is rude to retail workers, however some should really take a step back and think about whether or not it is worth yelling at an exhausted hard working employee about something that really is not their fault, and making them self look really unintelligent by being a negative display to the public.

My Rant

Honestly if I could, I would rant about this every time I had to work. I work at Sam's Club in the café part. Now, people say that retail is probably the easiest job out there... it is not! Every day there are new members who will literally yell at you, call you names, or complain about the littlest things. We are not a five star restaurant people, our food is all less than three dollars. I usually open, so I have to prepare all of the food and stock everything up so we are set for the day. Every time I work I have at least one rude person. For example, this one guy had came in and ordered a slice of pizza. So I gave him the slice and he blew up on me. He was yelling at me saying that he had never seen I slice so small at Sam's Club before and I offered him the other slice too so he would have both of them, he refused. He had made me put in another pizza for him and I had told him it would be around eight minutes. He comes back up in five minutes yelling for his pizza and I told him it was not out. When the pizza came out my coworkers lined up the pizza cutter perfectly and cut it and all the slices were the same exact size. I had given the new slice to him and he rolled his eyes and yelled "are you kidding me?!" This job gets very frustrating and I do not understand how people can be so rude in the world. We are working our butts off in that café and people just walk all over us for the dumbest things. If I went out and got a small slice I would not go up to someone and just start yelling at them, its just rude and you are just embarrassing yourself. One person had actually called me swears before cause she had to wait five minutes for the frozen yogurt to freeze when I had told her before she bought it she would have to wait. Now, when people say that retail is easy and all you do is simple stuff, I get very aggravated. I actually do a lot of work and dealing with people, in my opinion, is the hardest part of the job because one rude member can really ruin your whole day. Honestly, this happens every day so I needed to write about this.