Two Stories, One Lesson

First Story:

Every Wednesday for the last 12 weeks I've been working in The Grandstand food wagon at the Summertime By George music festival in St. Cloud, MN (except for the two weeks we got rained out and the one week we rained ourselves out).  Thousands of people, great music, fantastic food....week after week we park and sell and have a great time.  Tonight was the final George of the summer with a crowd estimated between 15,000-20,000 people, every last one of them wanting cheese curds it seemed.  At the end of the night as we packed away food and tidied up our operation I made my usual trek to the garbage truck with our two weekly deposits.  At the Summertime gigs the organizers have been great to work with, our fellow vendors have been friendly and supportive of each other, and the patrons of the event have been overwhelmingly delightful to serve.  But honest to goodness, the most pleasant people I've interacted with every single week have been the garbage guys.  They often quickly come to me and take the garbage bags from me so I don't have to toss them in the truck, and they thank me as they do so.  They are always making every effort to quickly clean up the area while giving the appearance of people who are taking pride in what they do.  Each week I've been impressed with the professionalism they bring to their job, and I daresay "professional" is probably not how most of us would ever describe sanitation workers.

Second Story:

Watch this.

The Lesson:

If garbage guys and a walk-on libero at a school with "Kangaroos" as a mascot can bust their tails to do their jobs as well as possible for the benefit of those around them while treating those around them with respect, well - what's our excuse for not doing the same?