No matter the job, hard workers can always stand tall and proud
One of the cool things about writing a column that appears in the newspaper each Monday morning is that I get to write about several holidays through the course of each year. One of the benefits of working about every weekend is that I’m off on most Mondays — several of which are actually holidays. I expect to be off this Monday — Labor Day 2010 — although most working people would probably agree that a day off is actually a day to catch up on some of the things you should have been doing for your family through the week, but didn’t have time to do because you were working.
These aren’t advice columns, although I often try to convey a message through explaining how I reacted to some kind of personal experience. Believe me, I have only scratched the surface of my personal experiences. Everyone has a story to tell, and most of those stories are a lot cooler than any personal experience I’ve ever written about. I don’t claim to be smart. I graduated from high school because I didn’t skip school and I graduated from college because I was too stubborn to give up. One thing I could do is testify as an expert witness on the subject of work.
I’ve worked pretty much since I was about 6 years old, and worked paycheck jobs since I was 14. I held down jobs all the way through high school and college, and while I can’t wait until the moment I can retire, I probably won’t quit working until the day I die. My dad was a worker just like me.
Dad had a job when he died. It wasn’t a big job, but it was a job, and he took pride in everything he did. He was too sick to work a real physical job, so he landed a political-type job with the county Weights and Measures Department. He could have coasted, but he worked as hard as he could. He made the a local national chain fast food restaurant actually put a quarter-pound of beef in the hamburgers they were advertising and selling as having a quarter-pound of beef in the finished product. He also liked making sure that gas stations actually sold a gallon of gas when the pump registered a gallon.
Since it’s Labor Day and I know I’ll be laboring on some kind of something, here’s the most important piece of advice I can give anyone looking for a job whether it’s their first job, or if they have been cut-off from the job they had before the economy went haywire. Take what you can get, do the very best job you can do regardless of the work you’re doing and keep your mind and eyes open to anything that comes along.
Employers tend to recognize workers who don’t say very much, but stay with a task until it is complete. At one of the construction jobs I worked, a co-worker told me that any time a boss came around, I should pick up a 2X4 and carry it from one end of the job site to the other to make it look like I was working. When I asked him why didn’t he just work, he said that was his way of: “Sticking it to the man.”
Obviously, he didn’t last long on that job, but I stayed on as a laborer, landed a sub-contract job of installing insulation in the evenings and on the weekends, and finished my college degree all at the same time. Other kids I knew were working just as hard. It didn’t have anything to do with being the way things were in the fall of 1972. I work the same way now as I did then, but I don’t lift heavy things any more.
When I got to Bluefield in 1982, I did handyman jobs until I could get a part-time job as a bar doorman at the old Holiday Inn. I went straight from there to a maintenance job at the Sanitary Board of Bluefield and wound up wearing bib-style hip-waders to work neck-deep in raw sewage. Once I got past the smell, I made it to my next paycheck. As a worker, I realized that no job was beneath my dignity if I was able to earn an honest living, not hurt anyone and support my family.
I’m smart enough to write words that other people will read, and smart enough to know that if this wonderful opportunity vanishes tomorrow, I would still have to get out and find a job to support my family. I still don’t consider myself to be above any job. That’s how workers think. They turn in an honest day’s work for a fair rate of pay that they agreed to before starting and do the best job they possibly can do. Workers may never be the richest people in town, but they can always hold their heads up high at the end of the day.
Bill Archer is a senior editor at the Daily Telegraph. Contact him at barcher@bdtonline.com.
Columns
September 6, 2010
No matter the job, hard workers can always stand tall and proud
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