He Work Hard

I have always admired and respected people who work hard. It might have started with my Grandpa Joe who had a distinguished military career, enlisting out of High School and making it to the rank of Major. Even after he retired, he kept working, mainly as a Sunday School teacher at a church near his home in San Diego. I will always remember how scarily impressive he looked in his Marine Corps uniform and yet how kind he always was to me. When I was young, he would let me sit on the arm of his big recliner and rub his bald head while we watched old-time western movies together. He was always smiling and giving me good advice about working hard and treating everyone you meet with respect.

The importance of having good work ethic that Grandpa Joe swore by made sense to me. So when I started my first company I looked for people with solid work ethic. Once a quarter, my wife and I would even send around an employee questionnaire, asking them to nominate the best employee for that quarter. I’ll never forget one questionnaire that was filled out by an employee whose job was to dig trenches for underground conduit. Nazario didn’t speak much English, so he handed his questionnaire in to me personally. It only had three words on it. He was voting for his fellow ditch digger, Crispin Gonzalez, and it simply said, “He Work Hard”. And Nazario was right about that!

I was reminded of Nazario and Crispin this past weekend when the temperatures soared, and our A/C went out. We had our A/C checked a month prior and the technician, who only spent 20 minutes on it, said nothing was wrong with it. He was right, it worked fine while he was there, but it went out again 5 minutes after he left. When we tried to get him to come back out, he made excuses, said he was really busy, and that he couldn’t come back until the end of September. So I called a different company this weekend who said they would send a man out the very next day.

When Saul arrived, he was very professional. He wore a mask and politely asked me where he should park. When I explained that our A/C unit was on the rear upper deck and that he couldn’t come through the house due to the Coronavirus, he said, “Then I will go over the roof with my ladders and drop down onto the deck from above with my tools.” And off he went, just another day climbing ladders in 100 degrees heat. Saul spent 30 minutes diagnosing the problem and then explained to me that our unit couldn’t be fixed due to multiple bad inverters. But he also said, “Let me see if I can at least get it working temporarily for you.” After another solid hour of effort, Saul explained that it wasn’t going to be possible to get the unit working, but that he wouldn’t charge me for any of the extra time he put in.

After Saul climbed down from the roof and brought down all his tools, he only charged me the standard $95.00 diagnostic fee. I gave Saul the $95.00 and then I handed him a crisp new $100 bill as a thank you for his strong effort. Actually, the reason I gave him the tip…. He Work Hard!

Without labor nothing prospers.

~ Sophocles