A story descriptive of who I am as a person
I worked in the kitchen at a big restaurant. I closed at night (which meant I had to clean everything up after the restaurant closed) 5 days a week. I worked with a manager who always found 2 more things to ask you to do before you could leave for the night.
Because I am who I am, a self competitive perfectionist with super high standards who is always trying to better themselves, I took this as a very personal challenge. Every night I added those 2 new items to my list of nightly duties and every night he found 2 new items to ask me to do.
After 6 months of this persistent perfectionist tango, a completely spotless station, a list of more than 300 items and extra time spent closing every night, we finally arrived at a night where he checked every single inch of my station and found nothing left to clean. He let me go without any extra items. It was the first time in his 20something years of management that he had ever done so.
The next day I got a raise but I didn't even care. I had won. I had reached a level of perfection that I didn't even know I could reach. I had surpassed my own standards and his notoriously rigorous standards as well. All my meticulous time and effort had paid off. To this day, it is one of the achievements of which I'm most proud.
This matters because today, 12 years later, I am physically and mentally disabled and I haven't been able to work in 7 years. I hate when people assume that I love not having to work. I hate when people assume I use my disability as an excuse to get out of exertion. I hate when people don't associate me with achievement anymore because I'm disabled. I am the same person I was then, my capability is just different.
Not working is the hardest thing I've ever done.
Disability is not lazy. Disability is not giving up. Disability is not death. It is simply another state in which I can continue to work hard to better myself.
