What Are Your "Stealth" Skills?

Did you know you're passively collecting skills? You might not know you have them till you need them.

One day, when I was five years old, my older sister Sydney and I were left at home to be babysat by my grandmother. She was a notoriously cranky woman (before you gasp, this is a fact she would endorse), so when I relentlessly begged her for a glass of Hawaiian Punch, her patience quickly deteriorated. After asking ten too many times, my sister and I were sent up to our shared bedroom to “take a nap and settle down”. What my grandmother didn’t realize is that idle minds make for mischief—and Sydney and I were clever little things.

Hell-bent on getting that Hawaiian Punch, we devised a plan.

The kitchen was right off the laundry room, which gave us a window of opportunity to carry out our punch heist. We took a laundry basket, filled it with enough clothes to conceal a jug of fruit punch and two glasses, carried it down the stairs, and looked at our grandmother with wide, innocent eyes—we were being dutiful children and getting a head start on laundry for our mom…duh. Logic would suggest that five and seven-year-olds don’t do laundry, but thankfully, logic wasn’t invited to the party that day. We made pretend footsteps to the laundry room, hoisted each other up to get two glasses from the top cabinets, and secured the Hawaiian Punch.

I’ll let you guess what happened when my mom got home and found us in our bedroom with big red stains around our mouths and a half-empty jug of fruit punch, but that’s besides the point. I share this story because it’s the first memory I have of learning that sometimes you have to be scrappy to get the job done.

When I was 14, I got my first job as a cashier at Chick-fil-A. I grew up in the South, so hearing the words “My pleasure" wasn’t necessarily a rarity, but actually saying them myself felt like something else entirely—especially when it was being said to a woman shuffling up to the register in the midst of dinner rush holding a single chicken nugget wrapped in a napkin claiming that it was “too small to be considered a nugget” and demanding that we give her one. single. replacement. nugget. For the record, I offered her a new 6-count nugget on the house, which she refused. She literally just wanted one nugget. The moral of the story here is twofold: nuggets are in the eye of the beholder, and the customer is always right (*unless they aren’t).

Eventually, when I had learned about the concept of earning tips, I moved on to a job waitressing at Steak ‘n Shake. I was 16 years old at the time, and had no prior experience waitressing—but with an hourly pay of $2.30 and money on my mind, I was determined to leave with the biggest tip payout of each shift. On a typical day, I buzzed around the restaurant in my bowtie and apron, taking orders and forgetting the odd table or two (waitressing is no joke, IYKYK). But I remember one day in particular, a party of 8 walked into the dining room, and the hostess ushered them to a table in my section. I trotted over, flashed a smile, and started rattling off facts about new items on the menu—and it wasn’t till I looked up from my little notepad that I noticed that they didn’t hear a word I said. One of the individuals at the table kindly shared with me that they were all deaf. I’ll never forget their incredible patience and kindness as I collected their orders and served their table that night—an excellent lesson in communication and humanity in my early teenage years.

Though on the surface these anecdotes might seem random, they’re more relevant than ever—for me, at least. In the same way that they say, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” the truth is: sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till you’re faced with a scenario that requires that very thing. A “stealth” skill, if you will. The skills that you’re pocketing along the way without even realizing it.

When I think back to some of these eras in my life, particularly my teenage years working in restaurants, I remember how I felt in those moments. To be honest, I felt far from where I wanted to be. I was a teenager in a very small town who knew she wanted to live in a big, shiny city and work in fashion—and my perceived* lack of opportunity made me feel as though that dream would never convert to reality. (*I say “perceived”, because the opportunity is almost always there, you just have to find it—or, create it).

But in hindsight? These experiences played an enormous role in shaping who I would become when I was ready to show up at Opportunity’s door, saying, “Let me in, please. I brought dessert!” I use these skills every single day, and I have gratitude for every bumble, hiccup, and red Hawaiian Punch stain that sharpened the skills in my arsenal, without even realizing it.

Maybe you relate to these experiences, or maybe you’re like Amy, and you’ve become a master storyteller as a byproduct of deceptively tossing the newspapers from your paper route into the woods to smoke cigarettes at age 11 (true story, and a legendary one—you can read more about this in her new book, “Almost Reckless”).

I’m not quite established enough in my life and career to be able to have big “I wish I knew ______ when I was young.” But I will say this: if I did have the opportunity to sit down across from my teenage self at a Steak ‘n Shake, I would tell her not to write off the experiences that feel like passive sidequests, and to try to pluck out these learning moments in real time. And if it were me in the present time, I’d make sure to emphasize the importance of putting down the phone, leaning in, and being present. Because more often than not, when you embrace the detours, you’ll find yourself learning things that you never would have otherwise—and you’ll be better off for it.

If this resonates with you at all, I’m excited to share our new podcast, The Grey Area, hosted by me, Gabe, and Matt from the creative team here at Tibi. All Gen-Z, figuring things out. Whether you’re Gen-Z, you know someone who is Gen-Z, or you’re just plain curious—we have really good conversations guided by concepts and principles outlined in Amy’s new book that prompt us to think beyond the black and white and embrace ambiguity. There’s really valuable information in there about seeing all these moments in life, as arduous or mundane as they may seem at the time, as dots that we’re collecting that eventually come together to create our big picture. We certainly don’t have all the answers, and we won’t always agree, but we do know that when we open the floor to good, honest discourse, good things happen.

I encourage you to read the book Almost Reckless and join along in our podcasts. I’d also like to hear what jobs populate your resume, but the skill set acquired goes way beyond the tasks listed, like “put hamburger in bag and smile.”