the art of schmoozing

In my NCES classes, they brought up one really good thing about the social services field of work. It doesn't pay well so you know that people that stick with it are passionate about what they do because they're definitely not in it for the money.

I got to experience a lot of that friendly feeling today at a brokerage provider fair at the town hall outside Kaiser on Interstate. I saw a while ago that there was going to be a fair and thought that it would be a nice way to get out of work for the afternoon so I insisted that we (my work) had to be there and I would do it with my roommate/co-worker.

But actually, it was important that we were there and not just to get out of work. Our marketing team does a thorough job so it's clear what my company's mission is but we could stand to be a little more approachable, not only with the customers we serve but with other agencies in the field who are not as well off as we are.

Basically, we spent the afternoon pointing out different people from different organizations that we each knew and got to meet a fair (get it?) amount of new people. A lot of my job is not just doing what my job description says. A lot of it is just gaining and maintaining good relationships with people, something that I never thought was my strong suit but it turns out that I'm pretty damn good at it. And, hell, I got paid to spend the afternoon at a fair.