Tale of Two Raws

Okay, I know it’s far fetched, but I think this credit card machine has helped me grow spiritually.

How this idea occurred to me was one day I was doing my usual activities getting ready to deliver lunches to our customers. This job, on a good day requires concentration. However, on a typical, three last minute orders kind of day, I need to apply all my meager focusing skills to pack the appropriately labeled paper bags with the correct order, including toppings, dressings and cutlery.

I know I make it sound easy, but a short order cook I ain’t, and organizing a bunch of bags with the right names and the right stuff inside is daunting. But I do it and I’m getting better at it. At least I haven’t forgotten the Energy Salad toppings in a while, and that’s my ‘doing good’ criteria.

I have left the best until last, and the reason for this post, in case your mind was beginning to wander.

We accept credit cards as well as Pay Pal and cash. I have to manually process the credit cards by punching in the card numbers, expiration date etc. What happens in eight out of ten times, if I don’t focus completely on typing the numbers in I will inevitably make a mistake and the card will come up as faulted. That is, I can’t talk to Joan, nor can I listen to her should she ask me a question. I can’t even take a sip of mind stimulating coffee, I must just pay attention to what I’m doing, and if I do, I achieve success and the card goes through. If I chat or get otherwise distracted I end up having to do the whole thing all over again, and that gets old real fast.

So if we expand this little insight into the larger world out there, the implications are enormous, at least for me, the queen of doing too many things at once. Should I choose to focus on the task at hand, be it talking on the phone, and not leafing through a catalogue, or walking and listening to the birds and not music, I suspect my enjoyment would be greater and the experience richer.

In considering this, I think one of the only times I really concentrate is when I’m working on the computer, and maybe that’s why I like it so much. I am listening to The Art of Happiness at Work by the Dalai Lama (while I’m driving around delivering lunches) (how ironic) and he is talking about satisfaction right now, and how there is sometimes a problem being satisfied at work. I’m finding if I focus and concentrate on the job at hand I feel more satisfied and fulfilled, even with a menial job, than I do flitting about fussing with a bunch of things and not doing any of them well.

What about you?