First job story.
When I was 15, my brother got a job at the public library (largish library, largish city.) All his friends (who were pretty much also my friends) worked there as well. I spent most of my weekend time there anyway, hanging out with my bro and my buds, and I found out that a weekend job was opening up.
I had to get permission signed by my parents (since I was only 15) and ended up getting the job. I was a “periodicals runner.” When I got the job, I was told that in the periodicals room, I was there to tidy up any of the periodicals that the patrons left lying around, and to make sure that there were at least three months of magazines on the shelves. I was shown how to do this by an existing employee, it went like this:
Start from the letter “A” and review the magazines. When you hit a magazine slot that didn't have three months of magazines in it, go to the back and grab one, then bring it to the front and start reviewing the magazines again. We had to do this constantly, because when a patron took a magazine to a table to read, we had to grab another back issue of that magazine and put it on the shelf (so it still had three.) Yes, that meant that when the patron returned the magazine to the shelf, we had to take the extra mag into the back room =
I did that for about a week. Then, the next week, I implemented my own system. I wrote down the titles of every magazine we had and typed them up with three empty O's next to the titles so I could check off how many issues of each magazine we needed. First thing on my shift, I'd review the whole magazine section with my checklist, then go to the back once, grab ALL the issues we needed, and refill the stacks.
Then, I'd sort of sit and watch so that when a patron grabbed a magazine off the shelf, I'd immediately go and get a replacement (subtly, not in a creepy way 😉 ).
Two weeks after I implemented my super-efficient system, I got called into the supervisor's office and told I was being let go. When I asked why, she said I wasn't doing the work. When I tried to tell her that I was given a goal, and the goal was achieved every day, she said, “But you need to look like you're busy. You spend too much time just standing around.” I tried lamely to argue my point (because I really didn't understand at the time) but I just got shut down. I was told by a friend who worked in the same department that they “knew” it was a mistake hiring someone so young, and that if I didn't “look like I was busy” they couldn't justify the position =