This week's guest blogger is Roosevelt Rhodes. He is a well known and long-time member of the Chicago media, but he chooses to write under this pseudonym. I have promised to never reveal his actual name, and no amount of begging, pleading or bribing will entice me to go back on my word. If you'd like to reach this mystery writer, he does have an e-mail address: rooseveltrhodes@hotmail.com.
Since Monday is Labor Day, Roosevelt has chosen to write about the workplace. He calls it...
"A SANDbox. Not a LITTERbox."
By Roosevelt Rhodes
I never met Bob. Yet, I think about him every day. Bob ran a filling station right where Chicago’s West Side met Cicero. He was a truck driver, turned mechanic, turned Sinclair station franchisee, husband and father.
Bob set up shop near 22nd Street. A Bohemian boulevard called Cermak where nearly 18,000 people a day took the streetcar to punch the time clock at the Western Electric’s plant on Cicero Avenue. I never met Bob and Bob never met Henry. But they would have dug each. I’ll explain later.
The Suburban Man took part in a fascinating exercise recently in this space. He played the parental soothsayer, and made some astute observations about what his kids would be when they grew up. Me, I'm not as concerned about WHAT they're going to be as WHERE they're going to be it. I’m one of those people who never wanted to just have a J-O-B. I’m obsessed with workplace karma. It could simply be that I’ve not done hard labor in 20-plus years. Spoiled, I am. I was once a janitor, and I worked at a bus garage in maintenance. The worst thing that ever happened to me on the job, was when the acid content of the engine cleaner we used ate holes in my gloves...then scorched through a couple of layers of skin until they bled. Now my only workplace hazard is bad mojo.
I love what I do. Most people aren’t that lucky. That’s why more and more I’m pissed at what I see or hear about environmnents at work. From sandbox to litter box. And NO, I don't believe people want company picnics on their one day off to make them love their gig. They want to 'play' at working hard.
During a major leadership change some years ago, a buddy told me about the day one upper manager marched through cubicle-land and got a chip on his shoulder about what people displayed on their walls, dividers and doors. Keep in mind it wasn't lewd or crude. He also griped about what people wore to the office. Mr. Tight-Cheeks never waited to see how folks dolled up when corporate people visited or on the days client presentations took place. He simply issued veiled complaints to middle managers, and secretly had cartoons, collages and other forms of 'personal inspiration' taken away. Then he slammed the door on casual Friday. This all happened unofficially, which seemed oddly wimpy. Or rather telling. I don’t believe this was about bling. It was a metaphor for autocracy.
You can't blame it all on suits. Top performers in sales or otherwise who believe their own hype also mess with the vibe. Consider an interview in 2002 with then Cubs right fielder Sammy Sosa. He was being asked about his idol, the late Roberto Clemente, which spun off into the query 'who is your living hero?' -- to which Sammy humbly replied 'me!' Then roared. The comment didn't play widely. Probably better that it didn't. Yet, somewhere during that season the shift happened in that clubhouse. Sammy went from teammate to necessary evil.
Back to Henry. He was the night janitor at a place where I worked in my early 20s. I asked him once if he liked the night shift, and he told me he didn't have a choice -- he worked another job. We used to gripe about Reaganomics and compare notes on the best ballyard catches of all-time. Our musings led me to dig into his other life. The day job. A middle school where he told me he was/is: The principal. Dude, got a twinkle then, and out of the corner of his mouth whispered "never want to forget how I got there". It was an attitude he breathed into that school. Teachers, counselors, and ladies who slung bad pizza onto cafeteria trays were busting down doors to work between those walls. He brought out a vibe that was contagious, because he never saw just his side of the ‘plant’.
Finally back to Bob. The reason I love people who make work into play. One imperfectly normal fall afternoon in 1958, Bob's oldest son was sitting in a college freshman lit class. His daughter had just slammed her books into her 8th grade locker, and his youngest boy raced across the alley headed home to a neat brick Georgian Bob had paid cash for a decade earlier. As his wife swept the front stoop and waited on that 3rd grader to jump the curb, Bob's 49-year old heart decided to call it a day. Here comes the happy ending.
The tears turned into nearly a half-century of laughter and practical jokes that baffled some bosses, and caused hundreds to fly by the seat of their pants while being productive at work. That college freshman learned something from a life that was too short. Bob's oldest spent his entire work life leading a parade of time not wasted. He didn't even notice until the day he retired eight months ago. He just thought he'd only get 18-plus-30 years or so.
Or better yet he just built a sandbox, and remembered to pack it in his lunch pail every day.
If you missed previous guest bloggers, click here: http://rickkaempferguestbloggers.blogspot.com
Have a great Labor Day weekend.
--Rick
