JOB WELL DONE!
Last week I had the wonderful privilege of watching a job well done. It wasn’t a baseball game, it wasn’t a concert, it wasn’t a good play.
It was logging and clearing. The land next to our new office building has sold and the logging company came in to clear the land for the new construction. It was awesome to behold. This group of guys really knows their jobs. And they do their jobs very well.
Men on heavy equipment took enormous pine trees down within a foot of my new fence. They never even scratched it. They drove huge loaders and scrapers and diggers within inches of the fence but never even brushed against it.
They did not waste a single tree either. All scrap was pulverized and taken off as mulch, you know the kind you put in your gardens. The trunks were trimmed and loaded to go to the sawmill to make 2 x 4’s and the like. Every single twig has been re-purposed or recycled. This was not a wasteful process.
Some of the trees that were there are what we call “trash trees” not good for much but brush fires. Yet, they too were recycled into mulch for our gardens to hold moisture on our fragile plants in the long Texas draught.
I imagine a different crew would have done a different job with different results. But this group of men was delightful to watch every day. I am sorry they are finished and moving on because there is nothing more satisfying than watching a “job well done” in the process.
There is only one way to judge an effort and that is by results; it is often harsh but it is always fair. It is fair to say that this crew is professionals. Their very neat results earn them the right to be called that. But if I just saw the results, I would not truly appreciate what “job well done” actually means.
If I just look at results, I miss the joy of the process, the camaraderie of the crew, the thrill of execution, the anticipation of completion.
If you have a crew doing anything, like a bunch of kids or employees or a sports team, please don’t just look at the results. Be a part of the process. If you don’t, you are missing a large part of what “job well done” really means.
Brenda
