Encouragement

What is the difference between reactions to positive and negative feedback? What is more motivational? No witty story is going to grow here as I contemplate this. It's one of those less than fun situations where my brain focuses too much on the moment. Digestion becomes the thing to do later. I have faith my brain keeps the words and emotions in a bundle and unpacks them on its own time, like in my dreams or whatever, and that the confrontation with criticism will eventually prove to be productive.

If it does, I will consciously never be able to attribute the outcome to that person, that time, those words they used to mould me anew.

My current menial labor is in a restaurant. I started as a busser—that idiot who brings you bread, water and silverware, the unknowledgeable a-hole hovering with a fifty percent chance of screwing something up for you without you knowing it. Yep. That was me. I was taught a thousand tiny details about things you, a guest, are not supposed to notice. The fact that you don't notice them is what means I'm doing my job. So I won't enlighten you on what they are, only how I feel, emphatically, about it.

It is very noble work. Someone must do it so others can enjoy their lives. The sort of training undergone to make guests feel smooth and carefree is ongoing. Even after you are technically proficient other anal retentive people working higher in seniority and merit are going to continuously notice things you didn't do and should have. It is a steady stream. A steady stream of negative feedback.

Most people attempt to put positive spins on this negative feedback, to say it with a smile, or whatever. Most people fail at this.

It tends to come out as a very clever combination of “You're Wrong” and “You're Good.” Win for behavior, fail in execution.

In between these motions are little glimpses of social behind-the-scenes footage between staff members. In these moments you are not being criticized at all, but are on equal footing with everyone around you. It raises you way up. It has a Machiavellian way of eliciting dog-like devotion.

Bussing, in particular, is great for training people like you would train a dog, because of its monotony and eternally changeless repetition of movements. Constancy.

Personally, this is an ideal environment for accepting criticism. The stress of the initial criticism melts into the next and the repetition builds up awareness. Unfortunately, this too has its limits.

After so long, I get bored with the repetition and stop caring whether or not I'm being criticized at all. Improvement stops. It becomes no better than the all love or all hate environment. Which is only the fault of the task at hand. If it were a task complex as, say, directing films, I would flourish.

Variation with constancy? Is that what we've learned in today's rumination on mundanity? Ironic to anyone else?