Jarrod Shapiro, DPM
Practice Perfect Editor
Assistant Professor,
Dept. of Podiatric Medicine,
Surgery & Biomechanics
College of Podiatric Medicine
Western University of
Health Sciences,
St, Pomona, CA

Do It With Gusto

The other day, my family and I were at a shopping mall in Phoenix, Arizona. We had just arrived for a family event and were killing some time getting lunch. I was standing in the food court area at a Japanese Teriyaki place waiting for my lunch. This was one of those places where the layout was open for all to observe their food being prepared.

So I'm standing there watching the workers. There were two young ladies far to my right taking customers' orders. They weren't particularly happy, smiling that dead-eye smile we all know from fast food restaurants, with a sixteen year-old kid just dying to pull out her phone and start texting her friends at the fast food restaurant down the row. They're not really there – at least in spirit – just killing time until that day's shift ends. I'm sure many of us can remember this from our younger days.

Standing to my left was another worker, sweating over a hot flat grill, cooking various combinations of steaming meat or shrimp and various vegetables and rice. This guy looked miserable, slaving away in a heavy white chef's-type outfit, red apron, and chef's hat with sweat beading his brow and steam in his face. When another worker said something to him – apparently a joke since the other guy was smiling – he grunted some response (he must not have found the joke so funny) and continued working. I felt some sympathy for this fellow, recalling my first job at a fast food restaurant. This was hard work.

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But standing between the miserable cook on the left and the lifeless cashier on the right was another guy. Like the miserable cook, he was dressed in the same ridiculous chef's outfit. And like the miserable cook, he was also sweating over his portion of the flat grill. But in addition to that, he was doing two things differently from his cohort. First, he was shouting out, "Teriyaki meat, get your delicious Teriyaki meat! Yum Yum Teriyaki!!" That was annoying. I could actually hear him shouting it in my dreams that night. However annoying he was, though, he'd make eye contact with various shoppers walking by, smile, and get people to try his sample. The effect, of course, was to generate an increasingly long line of customers to buy the full fare. In short, it worked.

It was the other thing he was doing, though – and how he was doing it – that really impressed me. Between hawking his "Yum Yum Teriyaki", he was cooking up piles of meat with incredible gusto. Picture this guy in his white outfit and chef's hat, sweating over a steaming pile of meat, playing with his spatula, tossing it around, banging it on the grill, and flicking it up in the air and catching it again. He had style, like the chefs at Benihana. It was a show that he took pride in. He spins a can of salt around on his hand, like a Harlem Globe Trotter with a basketball, and then bangs the salt with his spatula. He spins himself around once, like an obese Mikhail Baryshnikov in a cook's outfit, and then goes back to flicking his spatula around, all the while picking up a little piece of meat speared on a toothpick and calling out "Teriyaki meat, get your delicious Teriyaki meat! Yum Yum Teriyaki!!" Clearly, he was enjoying himself. Hot, sweaty…and happy. I was mesmerized. I wanted to keep watching this guy, but finally my own "Yum Yum Teriyaki" was ready.

I don't know if this guy actually liked his job or if someone deliberately paid him to be a spinning, hawking, lunatic. But I do know he was effective. I also know he was a standout. No one even looked at his coworkers. This guy shined.

If you're going to spend ungodly hours doing a miserable job, you might as well have a good time doing it, right? It's people like this you want to hire for your podiatric practice. It's people like this I love teaching to be podiatrists. It's pure and simple: gusto, pizzazz, passion. Enthusiasm is contagious, like some virus, but instead of a fever, you catch the fervor. It feels good to be around these people.

And it doesn't matter what the job actually is. There's a certain artistry that comes with this level of enthusiasm, turning the most mundane activities into something more. I was once at a Mandarin restaurant, and I happened to see one of their workers clear and reset a table. This guy was spinning plates between wiping the table and putting used forks in his bin. He gathered up the old glasses and set new ones out in a way that I can only describe as artistic. It was unreal. I know you're thinking I'm nuts, but clearly with the right attitude, you can turn even the most inane, boring thing into art, and all it takes is enthusiasm.

Now, I'm not suggesting you walk into your next surgery and start dancing and spinning with your scalpel blade in hand, flicking your pickups into the air and catching them, trying to be an "artist." What I am saying is we should take these people's example to heart and ask ourselves if we're doing our jobs with gusto. Do you stand out as a physician in your community? What is that busy, popular doctor down the street doing to be so busy and popular? What about your staff? Do they do their jobs with enthusiasm? If not, why not? We all spend so much time in our respective jobs, whether it's the fast food worker, nurse, medical assistant, technician, or doctor. Why not fill those hours with some fun? Why not fill them with gusto? "Yum Yum Teriyaki!!!"