The Good Job

I had two instances Wednesday where another person referred to something I was doing as either good or bad. First I was using a wire brush to scrape old paint off of a cinder block wall before we painted it. I was sitting on an upright cinder block scraping back and forth for over an hour and a customer walked in and said, "You must be on somebody's sh*! list." I didn't reply. I thought it was a pretty nice job. I could sit down and it wasn't very physical.

In the greenhouse I work in walking is kind of a big thing. The greenhouse was started by my grandpa and he once wore a pedometer to get an estimate of how much he walked each day. At 2 PM he took it off when it read 12.5 miles. He reportedly said, "I don't need to know how much I walk." He died when I was six so I have very few memories of him. In the greenhouse, jobs that involve sitting or just standing instead of carrying 15 pounds with extended arms are the good jobs.

The second instance was helping a customer carry hanging baskets to her car. Normally carrying plants out for customers is one of those good jobs because the loads are light and the trip is short (30 ft instead of 200ft). This time I was carrying freshly watered baskets that were very full of flowers so I had to have my arms extended and up so that my legs did not break any flowers. It was the hardest carry of the day. Yet, one of my coworkers told me that I just had the good job.

It's all a matter of perspective.