Remember Who Pays Your Wage

Despite I am not a millionaire; I think I have had a successful career so far. Every company I have worked for in the past has taught me a lot, and every time I have left a company, some way or another, my boss has always told me I have been “the best employee they have had” for a long time.

It has never meant that I am perfect. The very opposite, I have made really big mistakes in the past (like erasing a client’s account in the system, for example —oh, that was such a story!); yet I have always overcome them with a correct apology and a smile.

Now that I am getting older, I think I have come to pass the torch and share with the upcoming generation one of my deepest secrets, how I became the employee every boss has told him “you are the best in this I have ever met” over an over again.

I was supposed to help people learn English as a second language.

I was ready to begin, even slightly excited about it; but five minutes before my first class, my boss called me to his office to talk for a moment.

“Who is going to pay your wage?,” he asked.

I hesitated for a moment. Why was he asking me that? After all, if he is my boss, and he has just hired me to start working…

“I thought you were going to do that, sir,” I replied.

“That’s what everybody thinks, but that is wrong,” he said. “Your students, those who are going to be in your classroom class after class, they are the ones who are going to pay you.

I just collect the money from them as the sales manager of the company, because that’s my job; but they are the customers, so they are the ones who pay you, and me, and everybody in this company.

After that he added that if I gave them a good service, then they would in turn come happy to class and talk positively about the organization; which in turn would allow them to bring more students and grow as a company.

Since then, every time I have had a job I have been very client-oriented, doing what I believe is best for the client, regardless of what may have been better for the company.

Even in those few times that I thought my supervisor was going to kill me (like that occasion mentioned above in which I accidentally erased a client’s profile from the system), everything came out fine because the client did not go, and that was more important.

P.S. The author currently works for the company in charge of marketing a tax resolution software for professionals, PitBullTax.