I tried not to turn and glare at the child standing behind me in the Woolworths express line. But it was hard. This child was asking question after question to a very patient mother who was having her handbag tugged in sync with the child’s high-pitched drone.
Questions like: “Why can’t we get ice-cream?”, “What are you doing?”, “When are we going home?”
Once people reach a certain age they stop asking questions about everything. Whether we think that we’re going to sound like an annoying child or we believe we already know the answers, somewhere along the line we just stop. And if we do hit a snag in life or in the workplace, we tend to try to figure it out by ourselves in case we look a bit stupid for not knowing the answer in the first place.
When starting a new job it is understood that you will not know everything on your first day or on your first week or even a month in. This is when the time is ripe for you to be like a child and ask questions about your workplace, your customers, your role, your responsibilities, expectations, processes, structures, hours … and on it goes.
While it’s important to avoid tugging the arm of a co-worker and using high-pitched monotone that is sure to get you fired from pure annoyance, it is more important to really get your head around your new job. So go on—ask.
© Jacqueline Batterham
