When it comes to deciding what behaviors to perpetuate, the question of, “how does it benefit me?” comes up a lot. People are inherently motivated by rewards. Financial compensation for doing a job is a huge motivator for many people.
My Experience
My own personal experience where compensation might have influenced my own behaviors starts with my first food service job with tips. I was a barista who worked the front register a good amount of the time. Pretty quickly, I learned that the way you talk to certain people really does impact how much they tip you. Some people are silent customers who don’t like to interact, while others love to hold long conversations. Knowing how to interact with all types of customers and adapting to how they want to move forward is essential.
In addition, compensation sometimes just makes the harder jobs easier to cope with. During my kitchen’s deep clean, which takes place every term, most employees agree that the thing that gets them through the difficult shifts is the paycheck. Deep clean is 5 days filled with long shifts where nothing besides cleaning happens. It is not an easy or fun shift, but the paycheck at the end of all of it makes it worth it for a lot of people.
Although jobs can be great places to flourish and stimulate growth, there is also no doubt that they are what people do to make a living. Compensation and the appropriate wages for completing said jobs is an important part of life that pushes a lot of people to work hard. Matching the proper wages to the amount of effort needed is a balance that individuals have to figure out for themselves when they are thinking about the jobs they want to do in the future.
