What Wiping the Floors Taught Me
On Being a Student Manager for Stanford Mens' Basketball
As a university student, I recognize that I am at the mercy of my professors and TAs. There’s a tangible transaction of value; I put in the work to learn and perform on assignments and exams, and in exchange, I receive a piece of paper that I can leverage for a job. As an intern, I do the work no one else wants to do, and in exchange, I learn something in the process, I’m surrounded by successful people who I may want to follow career-wise, and I potentially get a return offer. However, some of these work dynamics play out a little differently.
I work as a basketball manager part-time for Stanford Men’s Basketball. Through this job, I’ve been able to meet, befriend, and train NBA players, travel to the Bahamas and Las Vegas for tournaments, and have been given more merchandise than I could ask for. It’s a job acutely meant for people who want to work in sports in the future. However, I don’t have this professional interest. I only work there because I love basketball and want to be around the game. But, if you don’t fit into either of these camps, it’s not a fun job day-to-day. My work responsibilities include and are not limited to:
Giving water to players
Rebounding for players
Setting up for practices and games
Picking up, setting up, and giving food to players
Wiping the floor when someone falls during a practice or game
Being available to help out with anything that a coach or support staff may need another set of hands for
You can see the work isn’t the most glamorous. Still, people take the job. Why? At many schools across the country, there’s a lot of demand for student manager jobs, for which they hold “tryouts”. Students are required to show up consistently, often every day, and are fired if they don’t. In addition, the teams can get away with not paying their managers for the work they do, because they can easily find someone who will do the work for free, simply to be around the program and gain access to the connections they offer.
My Experience
In my time working as a student manager, I’ve learned a lot about myself and what I think makes a well-oiled organization. Here are some of those organizational lessons that I think apply to myself in a future managerial role. People = I:
People want respect, not just external perks
During my first two years of working for the team, I got paid minimum wage. This year, under a new coaching and administrative staff, I don’t get paid. Despite this, I take issue the most with occasionally not feeling respected by my higher-ups. This sometimes manifests itself in the job tasks themselves, which is understandably unavoidable. However, not sympathizing with our busy schedules, expecting high commitment from people you don’t pay, or even misremembering or mispronouncing my name are all little things I as an employee internalize.
Experiencing these little things is when I resent the job the most, so in the future, I’d try to meet my employees where they are, particularly the ones two or three levels below you.
People want to feel like they’re making a difference
At the end of the day, I’m not out there on the floor, I’m not calling the plays, and I’m not even collecting statistics. While I love basketball and have immense pride in the program—even though I’m closer to the team than essentially every other student—it can feel hard to recognize the impact of what I do, because it is small on the surface. I have to remind myself that in making the lives of the staff easier, I can help them coach a little bit better each day, which in theory should help us win more; or if I can help a player get fractionally better, maybe that translates to a game scenario that helps us win.
I want to be aware of the difference I’m making, and I think this extends to employees in any other types of companies. Some companies try and create this idea of “being a family” in the workplace, but I think employees just want to feel important, useful, and taken care of. In the future, I’d like to remind my team members of examples of their useful contributions and why they were so important, being more specific than “thank you for all of your hard work”.
People want their colleagues to know that they’re making a difference
At work, when I feel intrinsically useful, I then itch for the players to recognize that I am useful. Being in a sports organization is unique because the most important people on the team after the head coach are not the assistants or other support staff, it’s the players. Everything we do centers around and caters to them because they’re ultimately the ones who bring in money for the organization and need to be treated as well as possible. On top of that, given that these guys have been in the 1% of the 1% of their craft for essentially their entire lives, receiving media attention, praise, and money because of their talent, it comes naturally that they carry themselves in such a way that they subconsciously expect this type of treatment most of the time (not that they’re cocky, just the nature of college basketball organizational relationships).
I’m grateful for the kindness and respect that the Stanford basketball players give me and the other managers. I know managers at other schools do not receive the same treatment. What I’m describing is a byproduct of the system itself, for which not much can be done. What I can say, though, is that this is extremely applicable to a future workplace. If you are leading a team, I think it falls on you to foster a culture where people speak highly of others in front of them and behind their backs. I would do this by leading by example—going out of my way to talk highly of someone to other people, especially if the person is at a lower level than the people I am telling them about—any chance I get.
At the end of the day, I enjoy being a basketball manager. Like any job, it’s not perfect, but I am grateful to have met the people I’ve met, experienced the things I’ve experienced, and learned the things I learned. There is a high chance I’ll be in a position in the future where I have to manage a team of people (or hopefully, an organization), and working minimum-wage jobs should help put things in perspective to create an organizational culture where people feel respected, important, and heard.
this is amazing and so insightful i can't wait for every future dhruv naik post