Favorite Speech: I Believe Speech
I believe that every American should be required to work one year of food service, customer service, or retail for a minimum wage. Kind of like how Israel requires one year of military service, Americans should have to do their time in the trenches of the service industry. The punishment for skipping out, of course, is hard time.
Now, if you’ve never worked a service job I’m sure you’re thinking: “why in god’s name should I be required to work a service job?” If you have worked a service job I’m sure you’re thinking: “God, if only.” The distinction is simple, those who have experienced service work are substantially more understanding towards others who work service.
Before I worked in food service, I would always tip ok and be polite to the server. However, after working food service, the way I interact with food service workers has changed. Now, if I see anyone disrespecting a service worker I will body slam them into the floor. There is CCTV footage out there of me in the midst of a bar fight because a patron had attacked the bartender.
What people don’t understand about working in service is that as an employee you are burdened with an intense amount of work and responsibility, while having almost no power or control over the work that you do. You additionally have basically no ability to stand up to rudeness or even open hostility from patrons.
Patrons like Paul. Paul was a man in his late 50s who would come into the cafe I worked at, sit at our counter, and spend around 2 hours at a time alternating between ogling the female employees and propositioning us. Perhaps if he had had experience in a similar job he would realize that the girls working at the cafes he frequented were not nice to him because they secretly wanted his gross smelly body, but because the alternative is being fired.
Or patrons like the gentleman who decided to take a world ending dump in the cafe’s urinal. This was an especially grievous insult as they were single person bathrooms. In order to poop in the urinal he had to have been sitting 3 feet away from the toilet, making eye contact with it.
You also lose much of the control you have over your schedule. At one point I was working 3 service jobs at once, and was smoking more regularly than I was eating. This was not uncommon among my friends also working service at the time.
I’m not saying that working in the service industry would stop every problem that arises surrounding the interactions with service workers, that would be impossible. But I do think that making people put themselves in other people’s shoes is the best way to reach a better understanding. And if after the mandatory year of service is complete and the person is still being intolerable, they can be put to death. Thank you for your time.
The I believe speech was my favorite because the topic allowed me to talk about something that I was interested in. It was also the speech that I got to be funny in. I had my friend look it over and she said it was "the weirdest but funniest speech" she'd ever read, which I think is a compliment.
I think I've improved a bit in my confidence, it does help when I'm talking more about things that I like. I still need to do some work on my pacing and diction, but I think I've come a ways in that as well.
I believe that every American should be required to work one year of food service, customer service, or retail for a minimum wage. Kind of like how Israel requires one year of military service, Americans should have to do their time in the trenches of the service industry. The punishment for skipping out, of course, is hard time.
Now, if you’ve never worked a service job I’m sure you’re thinking: “why in god’s name should I be required to work a service job?” If you have worked a service job I’m sure you’re thinking: “God, if only.” The distinction is simple, those who have experienced service work are substantially more understanding towards others who work service.
Before I worked in food service, I would always tip ok and be polite to the server. However, after working food service, the way I interact with food service workers has changed. Now, if I see anyone disrespecting a service worker I will body slam them into the floor. There is CCTV footage out there of me in the midst of a bar fight because a patron had attacked the bartender.
What people don’t understand about working in service is that as an employee you are burdened with an intense amount of work and responsibility, while having almost no power or control over the work that you do. You additionally have basically no ability to stand up to rudeness or even open hostility from patrons.
Patrons like Paul. Paul was a man in his late 50s who would come into the cafe I worked at, sit at our counter, and spend around 2 hours at a time alternating between ogling the female employees and propositioning us. Perhaps if he had had experience in a similar job he would realize that the girls working at the cafes he frequented were not nice to him because they secretly wanted his gross smelly body, but because the alternative is being fired.
Or patrons like the gentleman who decided to take a world ending dump in the cafe’s urinal. This was an especially grievous insult as they were single person bathrooms. In order to poop in the urinal he had to have been sitting 3 feet away from the toilet, making eye contact with it.
You also lose much of the control you have over your schedule. At one point I was working 3 service jobs at once, and was smoking more regularly than I was eating. This was not uncommon among my friends also working service at the time.
I’m not saying that working in the service industry would stop every problem that arises surrounding the interactions with service workers, that would be impossible. But I do think that making people put themselves in other people’s shoes is the best way to reach a better understanding. And if after the mandatory year of service is complete and the person is still being intolerable, they can be put to death. Thank you for your time.
The I believe speech was my favorite because the topic allowed me to talk about something that I was interested in. It was also the speech that I got to be funny in. I had my friend look it over and she said it was "the weirdest but funniest speech" she'd ever read, which I think is a compliment.
I think I've improved a bit in my confidence, it does help when I'm talking more about things that I like. I still need to do some work on my pacing and diction, but I think I've come a ways in that as well.
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