Slacking and Work Ethics
Today is a workday for me. There’s a wedding this weekend and the whole family will be here. I’ve got to finish up the yard and there will be a thousand errands. I’m really happy about the wedding because they are two good kids. However, this is really cutting into my quest for slackdom. As I was telling someone, I helped in getting the farmhouse ready for the reception. I handed someone a screwdriver and that was pretty much as far as I wanted to go with working.
I was just thinking of when I lived in German and my 75-year-old landlady taught me what work ethic was. She taught me no matter how small or dirty the job was, to do it the best you can and to take pride in what you did. Just knowing you did the best job you could is reward enough for happy feelings.
She taught me this, when she showed me how to wash windows properly. I had my Windex and paper towels and she just laughed. She had a chamois cloth and bucket of soapy water. I watched her as she started and I could see she was really enjoying herself, and the windows were a lot cleaner. Pretty soon I started following her example and found, yea this isn’t so bad. Each window was a new job and I was going to do the best job I could. Needless to say, I felt a big sense of accomplished afterwards. Just from washing windows.
I tried to take that work ethic and put into everything I did. I’ve been given jobs where I’m sure there were other people who could have done better, but there’s no job, no matter how much I didn’t like it, that I didn’t feel good about. I know that I worked as hard as I could and to the best of my ability, so regardless of the job outcome, I gave it my all.
So in keeping with my work ethic and quest for slackdom, I think I did a pretty good job on handing that screwdriver over. It wasn’t the hardest working job or the most time consuming, but hey, I’m a slacker.
UPDATE: I've found today what I said about work ethics doesn't apply to lawn work. One of my bosses used to say, "It doesn't have to work, just as long as it looks good". So instead of getting down on my hands and knees working in the flower bed and mowing all the lawn. Today it's just mowing the front and side yards.
I was just thinking of when I lived in German and my 75-year-old landlady taught me what work ethic was. She taught me no matter how small or dirty the job was, to do it the best you can and to take pride in what you did. Just knowing you did the best job you could is reward enough for happy feelings.
She taught me this, when she showed me how to wash windows properly. I had my Windex and paper towels and she just laughed. She had a chamois cloth and bucket of soapy water. I watched her as she started and I could see she was really enjoying herself, and the windows were a lot cleaner. Pretty soon I started following her example and found, yea this isn’t so bad. Each window was a new job and I was going to do the best job I could. Needless to say, I felt a big sense of accomplished afterwards. Just from washing windows.
I tried to take that work ethic and put into everything I did. I’ve been given jobs where I’m sure there were other people who could have done better, but there’s no job, no matter how much I didn’t like it, that I didn’t feel good about. I know that I worked as hard as I could and to the best of my ability, so regardless of the job outcome, I gave it my all.
So in keeping with my work ethic and quest for slackdom, I think I did a pretty good job on handing that screwdriver over. It wasn’t the hardest working job or the most time consuming, but hey, I’m a slacker.
UPDATE: I've found today what I said about work ethics doesn't apply to lawn work. One of my bosses used to say, "It doesn't have to work, just as long as it looks good". So instead of getting down on my hands and knees working in the flower bed and mowing all the lawn. Today it's just mowing the front and side yards.
posted by Family Man | 8:17 AM
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