PASSING NOTES BY JANE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 81, 29 December 1934, Page 8

PASSING NOTES BY JANE

Two Sides Of a Counter Wellington, December 28. Dear Barbara, . , Yours was a most interesting letter and I am delighted to hare the opportunity of answering it. Ypn have begun you say, real work in a department store, standing behind a counter where the people you have known all your life come to buy their ribbons and their fripperies. You have an uneasy feeding that their manner to you has changed, and you are ready to be hurt and on the defensive. . Do I think, you ask, that the fact of having turned shop assistant is going to make a difference to you socially? , , But naturally, my dear, of course it is. And the very first thing you must do is to settle things with your own mind, and sift the things that matter—to you—from the things that don’t. Take your own line and stick to it, head up and shoulders back. But realise the fact at the outset that you cannot combine work and play to any great extent, and that you will inevitably drop out of the ranks of your late play-fellows simply because you have altered your plan of life. And no one is so quickly forgotten by the young and gay as a school friend who fails to keep up the pace in the new pursuit of-amusement. Everything is as .new to.the others as it is to you, don’t forget. You refuse three invitations running—“ Sorry: I’m workingand your exclusion from the fourth festivity is a certainty. No one means to be unkind, but you’ve got to do a lot rushing round on your own account if you want to continue being “social,” and only the girls who regard their work as an unpleasant interruption of their amusement, find it worth the struggle. But if you care for your job, and have ambition, realising what prizes there are in the business world to-day for women of personality with efficiency and steady purpose, you will get more fun out of your work than many of “those others’’ do from their play. It’s up to you from first to last. The fact that your former companions are awkward in their recognition of you in your new environment is not so wonderful. The awkwardness probably came from you first. Other people are almost invariably as yon see them; and it is only too easy to read unkind motives into the manner of those whom you are regarding with suspicion. The attitude must come from you, not from them. After all, you are a hostess in your department, acting for your firm, the customers your guests. It is your first concern to make them happy. They have come, on business. They want something which it is your duty—your pleasure—to supply them with if possible. It is not in the least a personal matter, and before you can work with proper loyalty to your firm, your own feelings must be trained and under proper control. -

‘ If you make your progress an affair of the mind, which it should be, ■you won’t have time to bother about the little things that affect you personally, and you will find they are not there, but were-all a figment of your imagination. Nearly everyone in this world would prefer to talk pleasantly to another human being than unpleasantly. If you do not begin the stuffy, resentful approach, you will not attract its inevitable response. The person'on the buying side of the counter may hold all dhe social cards, but that is not, at the moment, the important point to you. You control your stock. Contrive a game in which your' bag of successful contacts is a few to the good each week. Polish up your sense of humour, and adjust your' sense of- values. And I wish you all the good hick you wish yourself in 1935—and all the fun. There’s plenty of everything good for the workers. With love, Yours, JANE