The Extra Thing Virginia and I had our "people" we adopted. Hers were the older folks. Mine were the youngsters. We lived in a mixed neighborhood. Primarily black. Professionals to skilled laborer. The projects a few blocks to the west. Most weekends would find me outside doing the yard work. It's also when the kids would be roaming the streets. Occasionally there would be one or two who would stop looking for work. A quick few dollars for a little sweat. Most of the kids just wanted to rush through, get paid, run to the store. There were a few who would linger. Hang around and want to talk. They were the ones who would want to do a good job as well as getting a payday. One young man in particular had a dozen questions. What did I do for a living? Did I like it? How much money did I make? (Still young enough to not know it's not polite to ask.) He asked if he could come back the next week. Sure he could! One of my "weeding out" systems was to set a time for them to be here. Next Saturday, nine am sharp. Some would show up on Saturday, most of them would show up sometime after nine. They were given a small job. Weed the flower bed for five bucks. If that discouraged them, I just never had work to do after that. This young man showed up on Saturday. At eight forty five. It was the beginning of a summers relationship. I began teaching. Things like mowing in straight lines. Cutting the grass in different directions each time. Bending down and pulling the grass around the sign posts and light poles. I taught him that work was competitive. When he got out of school, there were going to be ten people standing in line for that one job you want. He had to be better than everyone else. Take your time and do the job right the first time, because you weren't going to get paid to do it over again. One of the things I wanted to teach him was to take time and look for one more thing that he could do. There was always something else. I showed him the little things that could make a difference between a good job and a great job. Pull the grass from the cracks in the sidewalk. Pick the dead blooms off the flowers. Sweep the driveway. That's going to make you better than everyone else. And for God's sake, stop calling me Mr. Tom. I know you were taught that that's how you show respect to your elders, and that's a correct thing to do, but I'm now your employer. You don't call your employer by their first name and you especially don't call them Mr. Tom. You'll learn soon enough why. Call them by their last name. I'm Mr. Hayes, with a simple yes sir and no sir. He caught on quickly to being taught. He began calling the little jobs the "extra thing". It soon became a game. After his work was done, I was to go out and find the extra thing he'd done. He delighted in the game. I'd try to reward him with an extra couple dollars "tip". Related that to pay raises and promotions in the real work force world. Doing the extra things. I asked him one time what he did with all the money he earned. Found out he lived with his single mother and two sisters. His mother worked for a janitorial service cleaning offices in the evening. He'd babysit his sisters while his mother worked. He took half the money and bought pizza every Saturday night for dinner. Spent the rest on cool sneakers or that football jersey. Summer turned to fall. Which meant back to school. Raking leaves instead of mowing the grass. One day he came over on Wednesday after school. Looked troubled. Told me his family was moving across town. His grandmother had become ill and they were going to move in with her and help out. It was far enough away that he wasn't going to be able to work for me any longer. Instead of coming Saturday, they were moving. I thanked him for letting me know. Gave him a hug and he was gone. About six, maybe seven, years later, I was out, you guessed it, working in the yard. I heard, "Mr. Hayes!". Looked up and this handsome young man was walking up the driveway. "Remember me?" Took me a second, but yes, it was the kid grown into a man. With a bit of excitement in his voice, he announced, "I've got a real job!" Told me he'd graduated from high school. Had spent summers doing yard work for neighbors. Buying pizzas and sneakers. When he got out of school, one of his neighbors worked construction and got him a part time job cleaning up on construction sites. He'd been doing that for a couple weeks now. Getting paid each day. Working two and sometimes three days a week. His boss had called him over that morning and told him he'd been watching him and was pleased with his work ethics. The young man simply said, "It' just "the extra thing". His boss made him explain that to him. So the young man told him about our summer and how I'd taught him to find that one more thing he could do after the job was done. His boss told him it was what caused him to call him over, because he wanted to hire him full time and start him off as an apprentice carpenter. The young man said that the first thing after work, he wanted to stop by and tell me. I thought that was one of the dearest things I'd heard in a long time. I thanked him as he walked away. He stopped halfway down the drive, turned with his hand over his heart and said, "It's the extra thing."
Thank you for sharing that Tom. It's good when you're able to see the fruits of your investment in another person's life.