Going the extra mile

My new job is very interesting, and I believe I will have fun when I get better at it. This week I learned that if you mix chlorine products with ammonia products you will create the deadly gas used in World War I. So you must be careful not to do that if you take on custodial employment like me.

My workplace is a microcosm of the general population, sort of like the cast of Cheers but with better marriages. (This is a church.) On the subject of kitchen wooden cutting board disinfectants, you have your damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead chlorine bleach types who nuke potential E. coli bacteria, and your au naturel types who hold steadfastly to the vinegar camp. I read the literature on the debate they handed me, but I shan’t tell you what side of the argument I have come down on. I will say only that it is important to know with whom you are working on any given day.

When my husband died in 1999, I came on board with a landscaper lady named Lynn. She was passionate about her company and told me, “Nobody cares about your business like you do.” I felt bad about the implicit judgment on my character and wanted to prove her wrong and myself as zealous for her azaleas and bottom line as she was. But after accidentally slicing through two of her power trimmer electric cords, I didn’t last very long. Perhaps she was right after all. Last time I ran into Lynn she was working for Primex Garden Center and was very cordial.

The Ken Burns series on the Civil War says about Ulysses S. Grant that he was “a failure in everything except marriage and war.” I found that an odd statement. There is very little else in life besides the two, seems to me. Still, it helps, for reasons that must surely be sinful, to know the Ohioan failed in farming and bill collecting. I feel now that I can soldier on in spite of mistakes without great impediment to my identity.

If I do more work than the boss asks me to do, I am suddenly in control of the situation rather than a grudging slave to it.

I am trying to work as if the sprawling midtown facility is my own. This is not as saintly as at first appears, for there is a wonderful psychological trick involved. I discovered immediately that if I do more work than the boss asks me to do, I am suddenly in control of the situation rather than a grudging slave to it. (I hope this makes sense.) It is the same dynamic as that embedded in Jesus’ command to “turn the other cheek” or to “go the extra mile” when forced to go merely one. It shifts the power from the demander to the bestower of excess.

So the boss asked only that I wash down the countertops on the far wall of the kitchen. But when I noticed that the front grill of the air conditioning unit above that counter was filthy and that the blinds above that had not been touched in years, one thing led to another; and before I knew that the sun had gone down, he walked into the room and said sympathetically that at this rate I could scarcely get to my other tasks in the allotted time.

When I told him I wasn’t concerned about fitting everything into my eight scheduled hours per week, he came up with the idea that there was payment for the extra hours if it came to that, for my predecessor’s sudden departure had left three weeks of untouched moneys in the budget designated only for my position.

My present husband got a job working at Chrysler in Detroit in the early ’70s, and when he was switched from the small parts department to the warehouse where they fill orders for the dealers, he reported to the foreman and said, “They said I’ll be working with you.” The foreman promptly replied, “Go find a place to hide till lunchtime.” This is not necessarily a comment on unions but on a state of mind I wish to avoid. I once heard it said that “nobody works harder than a lazy person.”

And frankly I don’t want to work that hard.

Email aseupeterson@wng.org