Building Character One Whine at a Time

Today was another work-filled day, full of all the challenges and excitement that a day inside the big blue box can bring. A normal person would probably say that facetiously, but it's a fairly true statement for me. I enjoy my job quite a bit, which is a pretty new experience for me. I've had several jobs that never really gave me a sense of accomplishment, but strangely enough I would often be praised for how well I worked. This always confused me because it never really felt like I was working too hard. It wasn't until about 5 years ago that it finally struck me like a thunderbolt. The reason for my success came from what I believe to be the single most perfect example of reverse psychology that has ever been unleashed upon an unsuspecting kid.

It started in High School working for my Dad. I'm fairly certain to this day that my father is convinced I have about as much work ethic as the average garden slug. My Dad owned a log home company, and most summers my brother and I would have to work out there. We would shovel sawdust from underneath the lathe, clean the shop and do general chores for a couple of bucks an hour. In retrospect it was never really that bad, but at the time it felt like being shipped off to a detention center. The only thing that could have made it worse in my head would have been to have a ball and chain wrapped around my ankle. If anyone knows much about me, they probably know that I'm situationally stubborn. By that, I mean that if I'm forced to do something when I don't think it's right, I'll fight against it almost endlessly. To that end, work at the Log Home company was often accompanied by extreme laziness in an adolescent attempt to rebel against the "character" being driven in to me.

One summer my dad had us go out to a job site to actually help him build a new house from the ground up. Filled with all the angst and anger that comes from being deprived of time sitting on the porch with my friends, I was in fine form doing the bare minimum to get by through the day. This wasn't too difficult as long stretches of the day would be spent waiting to help while my dad worked on some of the more technical details of the job. I would loudly complain about how slowly the days would pass, wanting only to get back to the campground we were staying at so I could use the recreation room to watch old James Bond movies on the VHS player they had. It was on one such day that my father unleashed upon me his ultimate character-building technique. We had gotten done fitting a log and were on our lunch break, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drinking Mountain Dew. My dad looked over and said "I know you aren't enjoying this too much, I probably wouldn't have either when I was your age. You know, there is a little trick you can use to help the day go by faster. I learned it when I was back in high school, actually. When there isn't anything to do, just find some simple task to do. It doesn't take hardly any effort, and it makes time fly by while you wait." I can remember feeling a bit smug that he had finally admitted that bringing me along was a bummer, and I took to his advice willingly. I was amazed about how right he was, the day absolutely flew by as I swept the concrete, put tools away, organized lumber and cleaned up trash. It soon became habit, and I was happy to just "float" through my days doing "hardly anything", never thinking it odd that my Dad never really complained about my level of work anymore.

Ten years later I have finally developed a grudging respect for what my Dad did for me. I don't think I'll ever appreciate the wonders of scooping sawdust, but I now appreciate the lesson he was trying to instill in my brother and I. Since then I have been praised at each job I've taken for my work ethic, and it always made me scratch my head because I didn't think I was doing anything out of the ordinary. I would find stuff to do when it wasn't busy, because my Dad had let me in on the secret that it made the day go by faster. It was on a night when I was engaged with sweeping the back room of the grocery store I was working at that it dawned on me. I finally understood the sheer genius of what he had done, and I can remember laughing out loud at the obviousness of it. In appealing to my inherent laziness, he had instilled in me the single most important skill that a worker can have. He had managed to build a house and my work ethic in the same summer. It still amazes me.

Since then I have embraced the lesson, and work as hard as I can every day to make sure I'm as successful as I can be. I work hard to be able to provide for my family, support the people I work with and handle my responsibilities with practiced ease. I know that I have a long way to go before bumping in to my ceiling, and while I never would have admitted this while covered head to toe in sawdust, I owe that entirely to my father. Thanks Papa!