WE ALWAYS WANT TO BLAME THE WORKER.
Let’s DO ORANGE, a nice bright color orange that could make the company look more professional, a color that would stick out for a safety concern since we were around a lot of street curbs and close to roads. The orange color would also be somewhat unique because in the 80’sa and 90’s you didn’t see too many companies sporting orange work shirts. I believe we were still ,Custom mowing service, to change years later to Schroeder Landscape and Aquatic Nursery.
We continued to be moving in the right direction as my Mowing and maintenance service was now staffed with approximately 8-10 employees and we now shared a warehouse with another maintenance company in Howell on the westside of Evansville In. As we continued to grow the need for additional employees was necessary and our account list became larger, as the types of commercial accounts became larger also. On The East side of town, near a shopping mall there were two apartment buildings. Devonshire place and Devonshire gardens. Devonshire Gardens was a one story complex that was very long in nature with two separate buildings that parallel each other with fairly small yards in front of each doorway. We would often park on the far end of the of the roll of buildings and as the 3-4 mowers would begin to use the large 48” self propelled lawn mowers myself and my second in command, Terry , also my brother in law would begin to trim the many lawns that stretched nearly a quarter of a mile heading south.
As I began to trim, I always looked at it as a brisk walk and quite energetic that definitely kept me in shape. It was not uncommon that before we evolved into riding mowers and larger field mowing, that to walk with a weed eater or a walk behind mower we could easily travel 15-20 miles a day, as we were always trying to get each job done as quickly as possible so we could move on to our next account. You see, during this time in my life I felt it was so important that at the end of each week we had completed all our accounts before Sunday, because well, that is what i promised them, whether sunshine or rain early mornings and near dusk,( this was before mowers with lights on them) I very seldom ever remember mowing on Sunday. So knowing how many man hours each Job should take, I had high expectations of my workers, but also realized with our newer people, there had to be a learning curve and on this particular day, our newest employee, (we’ll call him Fred) was probably the one I would need to keep an Eye on. What I noticed very early was that as I was trimming farther away from the trailer, I could just barely get a glimpse of someone sitting on the trailer taking a break. I couldn’t quite make out who it was but by the color of the orange shirt that stood out very clearly I immediately assumed it had to be Fred and realizing he was new I felt he must be taking a rest. No problem, I thought, as I put my head back down and continued trimming as fast as I could. As I noticed a few of the other workers mowing farther down the complex I could see that Fred was not one of them which made me more convinced that it was him I had seen just a few minutes ago sitting on the fender of our mower trailers.. The way this complex was set up was to imagine two very long trains side by side some 30 ft apart and in the front,middle and back side of these buildings there were many patches of grass bordered by sidewalks and building walls. Each separate building allowed you to go back behind and through and so every 10 minutes or so you would be farther down the building and coming again out to the front which allowed me to look back at our trucks., Each time I did I still noticed Fred sitting where he was before. I was becoming a bit frustrated that one of my new workers was taking too long of a break, but more importantly the farther down I trimmed away from the truck the longer it was going to take me to get back to him and question why he was just sitting there. Finally I had had enough and as I laid my weed eater down, and started walking his way I thought for sure that when he saw me coming toward him { he had now been sitting there for nearly 1 ⁄ 2 an hour.} he would go back to work. But no, by now he was no more than a spec because I was so far away and as I continued to walk faster toward him, I tried to rationalize how I should discuss my displeasure with his lack of work. Again he was new, and I should give him the benefit of the doubt but come on Man, I mean really. As My mind raced to come up with a non threat- producing way to handle this moment,
I was close enough to see him,…. And a few steps farther, a huge smile came across my face as I began to shake my head slowly, I walked a few steps further and I began to laugh uncontrollably. Oh My Lord, was all I could say as I now realized all this time I had been frustrated with my large orange igloo water container that was set on the trailer by my brother in law.. Instead of giving Jason the benefit of the doubt I had accused him, in my mind of being a lazy, unproductive, employee. But not to be embarrassed I went up to the jug and shouted “Hey you sorry excuse for a water jug , get your butt off this trailer and get moving, hell I bet your water isn’t even all that cold ”. Pretty sure some of the tenants of the apartment who saw me reprimanding my water cooler probably thought, “ this is what a real bad day looks like. Little later Jason did come by the truck during his break to get some gas to fill up his lawn mower. He couldn’t understand why I was looking at him with a big smile on my face. “Well Jason , I said , how’s it going today, and what do you think of this mowing business? ” It’s good he said, then he asked you to look at me like something’s up, what’s going on.. Is everything ok” again I busted out laughing and said no not at all , but sometimes I realize I can be a real idiot. And all I can do is laugh at myself. Sorry, as he hesitatingly turned around. This was another one of those times that I realized that Yes God You do have an incredible sense of humor, and yes I may be one of your greatest comedy acts.
Moral to the story. I learned that day that from here on out I was going to do my very best to give people” the benefit of the doubt”, trust in the positive first, be patient and dwell on the belief that it is going to be ok.. I feel we are a people that often will first go to the negative before we go to the positive, we often have two possibilities of thinking “they’re mad at me.” they are going to be late…They think it’s my fault.….they forgot to send the check, he will not call. They are not going to do what they said they would. He forgot about me….……. Why do we struggle feeling first that we are going to be disappointed and psychologically we are hurting ourselves when we think of the negative versus dwelling on the positive possibilities. Yes I must admit that it is human nature to believe the worst instead of everything will be ok whether as serious as a dreaded accident to as simple as why my new employee is taking too much time on his break
.. We have the power to negate what we think could be wrong, and the power to be confident of what will show us the better way. Most of the time it’s our mind saying no when instead it’s our heart that is saying yes just give it some time..
To the people of the igloo cooler corporation. I do regret yelling at your wonderful orange containers . It was all my fault and yes it was keeping the water plenty cold.. ..
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