Spontaneous Blog Post #2: Benefits of physical work

Happy Saturday everyone!

I’ve got lots to be getting on with this weekend, so I thought I’d just sit and type up this week’s thoughts before getting on with my day…

I’m going to focus on the benefits of having a physical job. As many of you who know me will be aware, I started a new job in the cleaning industry just over a week ago and I’ve been having a blast! Cleaning may not be on top of everyone’s career goals, but for my lifestyle, I believe this job suits me completely. Heading out in the morning to drive to various sites and returning mid- late afternoon depending on the workload, it feels great to have been on my feet and knowing I’ve spent the last few hours moving the whole time!

1. Working with active people

One of the best things about working with active people or physical workers, is their can-do/ get-on-with-it attitude. Most of the people I work (and have worked with in past physical work) are lively, fun and positive people I can get along with while passing the time between jobs. We are all on the same level, all here to help each other achieve the same thing. When people are moving and completing physical tasks, we release endorphins, the happy hormone you get when exercising- this helps create a positive atmosphere and high motivation to just get on with it!

2. Positive Energy increase

Following from my previous point, working physically is essentially like working out and you body creates that happy hormone! By the time I’ve finished a days work, I’m still filled with positive energy to do my chores at home so that my days off are actually free to do more tasks I want to get on with, like my video editing and my blog writing. In general, I feel like I have more energy to even work out outside of work as well as the physical work I do during my day job. I can feel this having a positive effect on my body and my energy is increasing!

The constant changes and different places we visit in a day is enough to keep my mind stimulated so I am never bored. There is routine, yes and the tasks are repetitive but them being in different places is enough to keep them from getting stale. Knowing that once I’ve hoovered this block, we have another new place to drive to. Believe it or not, this is the first job I’ve been to, since my catering job from back in Cumbria, where people have NOT said that they hate it, or not actually told ME I would soon hate it! Yes, people can be so negative in the work place, thus bringing down the whole energy to a low, boring and unsatisfactory place. Being surrounded by happy workers whom enjoy their jobs and rave about it all the time, are on the other hand, raising the positive energy in the atmosphere, making work a much more pleasant and exciting place to be!

4. Actually driving on the job!

When I was unhappy in my last “sitting behind a desk prison” job, one thing I dreamed of was the freedom of driving, as well as being physical on the job. This is the first job I’ve had where I’ve had to drive a little van and I’ve driven 2 different vans this week and 3 times in total. They are really fun to drive and they remind me of my good old Ford Escort, my first car- I have bloody missed driving diesels, they are an absolute dream!

Not only is it fun driving to different sites in a day, I’m getting to know the roads a lot better and even outside of Sheffield- we drove out to the Derbyshire countryside last week and it was so fresh to be in the great outdoors!

5. Task focused work

Compared to jobs I’ve had in the past, this is the first job I’ve had which is not customer focused. I like feeling confident in what I am doing and working with a lot of people whom are on my wavelength, they understand and are training me up to feel confident by just doing or letting me get on with it. I like how I’m left to figure out my own way of  doing things and as long as it gets done to the right standards, at the end of the day, I’m allowed some flexibility on carrying out the task itself- like the whether I hoover from lower to upper floors etc.

The last job I had (in catering back home) which I actually enjoyed, was only half customer focused and if I were to complain, it was only about people treating us like rubbish because some of them looked down on us because, *posh voice* we were just the counter servers, there to feed their puckered-up faces!

Don’t get me wrong, I do like people. I am a sociable person and I know how to deal with people. I want to be a life coach to help people, so I do have a tolerance for people who want to be helped. However, on a daily basis when “helping people” was the “focus” (talking mainly about my call center job here) it really put me off working with customers! I have, in my own head a solution for the customer, but when a company’s policy and procedures, (which nobody seems to understand and constantly changes) is in the way, it really makes you look like an idiot when you can’t provide that logical solution you had in mind as the procedure forbids it! It wasn’t always the actual customers that put me off- it was having to deliver the ridiculous information to them in the first place and have having that responsibility!

Finally…

So, overall, I guess the best thing about having a physical job, is knowing confidently that it is the right job for me! I have had counter jobs, physical customer jobs, sit on your ass customer jobs… I think it’s fair to say that I’ve had enough jobs to compare and realize what kind of work best suits me.

The main breath of fresh air is going from long hours customer service in a call center to a fast paced physical cleaning job based in various locations.I have seen such a huge difference in myself, my energy since I started this job and a lot of positive things have happened…

Just a little disclaimer I want to get out there- I may have cracked on customer jobs and call center work in this post, but I am in no way judging anyone who may currently have those job roles- they are necessary jobs and some people kick ass at them! I’m just saying, that for me, as an individual, that type of work is  not good for me and I’m not happy with it as my job- my blog, my opinion based on experience.

I am different to the people I worked with at my last job who were very good at being confident with customers, computer skills and getting whatever stats they needed, having the mental stamina to keep that up for the long days! I honestly sucked at it. I was not feeling the “team competition”, I was always forgetting my passwords and having computer issues, I never had the stamina to mentally keep up delivering great performance for 10 hours a day and I was not competitive. For one thing, I thought I had a customer service job, not sales. Secondly, competition to me is a physical race, a test of strength, stamina and agility. I guess that’s what makes me a physical worker. My mental stamina is not the same as my physical- I would often find myself staring at the computer for ages while my mental stamina just drained away and I hadn’t a clue what I was doing so I’d have to go for a walk to think.

Anyway… got on a bit of a tangent there, but I guess that’s what these spontaneous unplanned blog posts are all about! All in all, I’m super excited to be in the new job I’ve landed recently and finally happy to have found the right thing. So bring on Monday and thank you so much for reading! Have an amazing weekend!

All the best,

Heather ^_^