September and October have been quite difficult for me.
For a bit of context, I'm currently working in Germany, in a restaurant, in the kitchen. I have a seasonal job, meaning I come here and work for as long as the season lasts. In total, I have worked 11 months here, 5 last year, and 6 now, with one more to go (this one). I also work in two different positions. In the morning I prepare fish and help with peeling and cutting vegetables, and in the evening I decorate food and take it out.
Things changed quite a bit lately due to Corona becoming a nuisance once again. Two colleagues got sick, right after another one quit her job. Because we were understaffed, my bosses decided to put me to work in one of the sick colleague's positions, to make salads, which was something I never did before.
For an entire week I had to do a job that I had no idea how to do. I had to make some sauces, soups, to quickly learn all the type of salads that we're doing, and to learn to be fast, to keep up with the amount of work that kept increasing despite us getting to the end of the season.
Once those two colleagues got better, things went back to normal. I went back to my normal job, and things were well for around a week or two. Then, another colleague got Covid. He still has it, and he's gonna get tested again tomorrow. While he's away, I had to do his job, because his is more vital than what I usually do.
This time however, it wasn't salads that I had to do, but side dishes and sauces. For a few days I had to prepare the fries, the croquettes, the noodles and much more, plus to add the sauces to all the dishes that our chef made, then take everything out. This time things were a bit easier, because I worked with the guy that did all this for a while, so I knew, more or less, how he did his job, but some things were still new to me.
Anyway, both of these experiences taught me something very important that I was ignorant about in the past: you don't really know how difficult someone's job is, until you have to do it yourself.
I often looked at the guy preparing the salads and the soups and thought to myself "Why does he move so slow, can't he just do all of this a little bit faster? After all he's only putting salads in bowls, according to the tickets, how hard can it be?". I did the same with the other guy, the one preparing the side dishes, thinking "How hard is it to get all the side dishes done by the time to food is ready? You've worked here for 5 years, you should know how to do everything quickly and not make mistakes by now!"
In my mind, I thought I was right, because I didn't know much about their jobs. I just saw them doing it and assumed that they were fairly easy, without taking into consideration that I might've thought that because those two people did their jobs so well that they made it look easy. They weren't that stressed any more and hurrying all the time because they knew what they were doing.
I only realized just how difficult their jobs were once I had to do them. I realize how much stress there is when you have to make 15+ salads, soups and special salads all in the span of a few minutes, so that the chef can start cooking. I also realized just how big of a problem it is to run out of ingredients in the middle of work, and how much of a bother it can be to have to go get them. The same applied to the other colleague. I understood just how difficult it is to get 10+ side dishes ready just a few minutes before the food is ready, so that everything is warm enough for people to eat, to be on the same page as the chef, to prepare separate dishes that only you have to do while doing all of that, and so on.
Now that I went through those jobs I am more understanding of mistakes and small favors that they ask, such as "Can you go and get me this, or that?", because I know just how much stress they have to go through and how hard it can be to have to leave your place to go get something.
So here's something to think about next time you get annoyed when someone makes a mistake at work or when they seem overwhelmed: everything might seem easier from the outside, especially when you have no idea how hard that job is, but that person might have to do way more than you think and handle quite a lot of stress. Be nice, be understanding. In their place, you might perform worse.