My Dad always said that if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well, no matter what it is. Even the smallest, most insignificant, menial job should be done well. That advice was imprinted on me from an early age, and I have tried to stick to it ever since, – from painting a neighbor’s picket fence at age 9, to my 10-year stunt as an elementary school crossing guard in my late 70s.
The job that gave me the greatest push forward happened on my very first day of apprenticeship, a full year of which after high school was required before being accepted at the university to study mechanical engineering. I was very lucky to get a job at a nail factory, where I was assigned to the foreman in the production hall. The first day he showed me around, introduced me to all the nail machine operators, and told me how it all worked, including all the strange machines in his own tool shop, – all new, unexplored territory to me. At the end of the day, he told me to sweep the floor in his office, – a job I took very seriously, sweeping thoroughly around all the machinery, all creeks and corners, – too occupied to notice how the foreman was looking at me, – until afterwards, when he told me the floor had never been swept so thoroughly by any of the former apprentices. He later told me that it had really impressed him that I took such a menial job so seriously, as if it was the most important job in the world. That alone told the old foreman that he had a winner he could trust. He quickly gave me more and more responsibility, and before long I could operate all the machinery in his workshop, from steal shapers to lathes and sanders, and before long I was his trusted tool and die maker, – nothing that any predecessor had ever accomplished, he told me, – and all a result of sweeping the flow so well the first day!
I quickly became very popular among the nail machine operators, when they discovered that the replacement parts I made, were all so much more precise, and lasting so much longer, than they had ever experienced, making their own job so much easier, making the nail machines operate so much longer in-between each shut-down for replacement of worn machine parts, and overall more and better looking nails, and far less scrap. That had a direct impact on the company’s bottom line, management later told me. As a side-benefit, I learned to operate all kinds of machinery, and I learned to weld, which came in handy when I later worked for United Airlines! When they were on strike, which happened 3 times while I worked there as an industrial engineer, I was assigned to the weld shop, so that broken yet engine parts could be repair welded for other airlines, – which also kept me employed and paid, while my coworkers were laid off, – unpaid.
Oh, was my Dad right! Even sweeping a factory floor is worth doing well.
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