What Type of Person Are You?featured

I  had a mentor that taught me to never be an “order taker.” I didn’t really understand what he meant until I started seeing people get fired and quitting left and right at my last job. It was usually because they couldn’t handle companies with no “structure.”

Mentor told me, “It’s easy to be an order taker, it’s much harder to a chef.”

I started observing the fact that some people just can’t handle pressure. These are the order takers. They like structure and that is the only way they can work.

And while there is nothing wrong with that, order takers really put themselves in a box and made themselves less marketable and less approachable in general. These people are not really open to feedback or change in general. They were trained to do one thing and that is the only thing they can or will ever do.

True skills are those that be transferred to any job and if you are not open to adapting to constant change, life may become quite rough. I’m not talking just about your professional life, I am talking about life in general. There will always be chaos in relationships, friendships, and family, and if structure is the only thing you can handle, all these other relationships can potentially fall apart.

So what did Mentor really mean he said it’s easier to be an order taker? He meant it’s easier to follow a specific formula as an order taker than it is to invent something completely new from scratch as a chef, and boy was he right.

Coming directly from In N Out Burger, I found it very hard to become more than an order taker. I literally took burger orders and my new job years ago required I make brand new recipes altogether.

I was in shock when I had to finally face the real world. What do you mean I make up my schedule and what I do all day? I was scared that I would be lazy, I was scared that I would fail my company, I was scared of even moving.

I quickly learned I was afraid of life and this fear would never serve me. I embraced change and realized I was so much more than an order taker. I realized I was a talented chef with amazing recipes that needed to be shared with the world.

So, I got my hands dirty. I rolled through the mud. Literally. I made mistakes and I don’t regret any of them. I learned for every single one. I embraced getting dirty and quickly became open to learning new things and inventing new procedures all my own. School and In N Out taught me structure, but life, in general, has taught me so much more.

Life is too short to simply be an order taker. Follow your passion, and constantly create new things and recipes. There is no limit to what you can innovate when you are a chef.

However, if you choose to be an order taker, doors will quickly close in your face and people will lose faith in you. Not because you are not skilled, but because you are not flexible and/or open to new things, people, places or experiences.

Boxes are great to live in, believe me, I have been there, done that. But ripping the box open to create a go-kart with it is so much more fun. You learn more about not only yourself but about humanity in general.

So what are you? A chef or an order taker?

Love Deeply and Forever,

Karen

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