Page 70 - Kindness - No Forward

Treat Every Job with Dignity

Every person’s job should be treated the same—with dignity. From the
chairman to the mailman, from management to maintenance, jobs are
performed better when they are done with dignity.

Our job as communicators is to communicate dignity and respect to
everyone we contact---customers, employees, management, family.
Everyone.

Does it take more dignity to be a chairman than a mailman? Does it take
more dignity to be in management than in maintenance?

Maybe it’s time that we treat everyone with the dignity that they deserve as
unique individuals, not the dignity that we think their position, or job, or
affluence, deserves.

I had a friend once. He passed away a few years ago.

As a young man, he had dreams of a good career, a family, an active life
with his wife and children.

The same dreams of all young men.

An interruption in his plans, called World War II, changed a lot of that. A
war injury impaired his vision and took away his law career.

So my friend couldn’t drive a car.

He couldn’t play ball in the back yard with his son, couldn’t fish, and
couldn’t practice law. He couldn’t drive his daughter to her first date.

So my friend sold furniture at a department store for 35 years. And he did
his work and raised his family with pride, dignity, respect, and
courtesy…and he never complained.

My friend’s name was Bill.

My sons called him Grandpa.

I called him Dad.

He was the kindest man I have ever known.