I Quit A Job

So... for the past month I've been working for Panda Express, a nationwide Chinese fast-food chain. Usually you find Panda Express in food courts and in airports. I got the job almost immediately upon moving up to Bellingham, which was a great, because of the difficult job market. I've been in training for 3 weeks now, learning time-tested methods for serving customers with speed and doing anything in between. My manager is from Taiwan, so I love speaking Chinese with her. When I first got the job, I thought it would be a great experience.

But, in the last week, I realized that Panda Express and I weren't a good fit. The emphasis on speed is something that I struggled with. Early in the job, my manager began to scold me for not working fast enough, which on the contrary, I was working as fast as possible. Soon I started to notice that I just wasn't cut out for the job. Even after a couple of weeks of training, my manager continued scolding me for being too slow. Several nights, I wound up finishing closing tasks at 10:30pm instead of 10pm, and she was on the verge of being furious.

On Wednesday, I quit my job. I explained to my manager that I just wasn't fast enough. Obviously, she was disappointed; she has invested effort to train me. She even went into her own Panda Express story about how she working from the bottom up and endured the same frustrations. Gently, I reminded her that I had made up my mind. I quit.

I've never quit a job like that before, but it's a freeing feeling, especially because I no longer have to pretend to be the super speedy working, which I am not. In my next post, I'll write about my new endeavor.