I remember mowing Mr. Johnson's yard one summer. He was the postmaster at the Churchland Post Office in Portsmouth, VA where I grew up.
Mr. Johnson lived about 4 blocks away, and had a pretty big yard. I was about 14 or 15, but don't recall too much about that yard, but I do remember the incentive! Almost every time I finished mowing his yard, he would bring me a nice cold Coca-cola!
I don't know how much he paid me, or how long it took to finish, but I had the reward of a cold drink when I was done, and I'm sure it made me work faster and hurry up to finish. It's things like that ice cold reward (just as much as the cold cash) that instilled self-motivation in my work ethic.
I also remember Mr. Johnson had a police radio in his garage, and we would listen to it while I was cooling off after I was done.
Those were the simple days of working: Get the job done, drink a Coke, spend some time talking, and get paid. Work Ethic 101!
I never had a paper route growing up but a number of my friends did. It was a royal pain to be interrupted in the middle of the afternoon to have them go deliver the local paper. We may be playing baseball or hunting for turtles in the woods and have to stop for them to go deliver their route.
ReplyDeleteThis is where teamwork came in. We all had bikes. It was a mandatory mode of transportation growing up. So, the route had 60 houses on it and there were ten of us. We'd split up the papers and and deliver it in record time so that the interruption was minimized.
Collecting involved moving along the same street but both sides at the same time. We'd yell to each other how many we collected from and at the end of the street put the collection book back together.
The funny thing is we would help our newspaper delivery friends out but never expected part of his earnings. It was all about camaraderie.