Friday, January 13, 2012

Choice

The pivotal moment - we all have them. A choice - seemingly a small decision but one which changes your life.

My painter Winston and I had a talk today about his lead guy, Jose. About 8 years ago, while getting gas in his paint company truck, Jose and an older Mexican guy approached him and asked if he needed help. Win had too much work at the time and too few people. As it happened, he was on his way to strip wallpaper - the deadliest job in a painters repertoire. He hired them both and drove them to the job where, after a couple of hours of stripping, Win realized the job was going to require special equipment. He stopped the work, drove the two guys back to Bonsall and made the following proposition:

"I'll pay you for the four hours you worked and hire you again OR I'll pay you for a day, double what you earned, but you'll never work for me again." The older guy said he'd take the day's pay.  Jose said, after thinking a bit, "I'll take the half pay." For eight years now, Jose has worked every day for Win.

Jose ran when he could walk, he jumped instead of stepping over things - he threw himself into the job and it's paid off. Now he has a home, wife, truck, car is skilled at every aspect of the trade and he's an effective supervisor. Not only that, but he seems a happy man.







2 comments:

  1. I have a travel tip for you; carry a bottle of grapefruit seed extract tablets. We buy the Nutribiotic brand. Whenever we feel that we have eaten marginal food, either foreign or domestic we pop a couple of these and they somehow mitigate any resultant crud.

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  2. Great! I'll try it. We love to try/eat street food and you know chancey that can be!

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