Flashback

I used to clean blinds.

We would go into a home or business in the morning, take down all the blinds (venetians, verticals, pleated shades...), take them back to our shop, clean and dry them, and then deliver them at the end of the day.

It was a mixed bag... it helped pay for a lot of books, classes, and food. It was a fascinating study in business process change, training, and management, because I was leading teams with extremely high turnover and had pretty free reign with how they were trained and managed on-site. It really screwed up my back. It made me appreciate, in a way that's almost scary, how good it is to have a job that doesn't require me to shower when I get home.

Anyway, today there are some guys working on the heating in our office. They're moving the desks that are close to the walls. They're moving shelves full of books. I guess in a little while they're going to start tearing stuff apart. And it's hard to do that discretely.

And it makes me remember that feeling of going into an office, having to take off my shoes and climb on desks to get to windows... struggling with blinds that were big, and heavy, and in awkward spots to reach, trying to do the best job I could... sweating, straining, sometimes really pushing myself to physical extremes that I never would have expected would be required for that job. But I could always tell what the people were thinking.... "I work in an office; he's cleaning the things that no one here wants to clean". I wanted to tell them... I'm smart, I'm capable... I could do so much more than this, if someone would just give me a chance.

Well, someone's given me a chance now, and I'm doing just fine. I'm glad that I had that experience, though, just like I'm glad I've been able to live in a place where I don't understand the language that well... where I sound like a 5 year-old when I try to speak, and make stupid cultural mistakes. Because now I know how to look at the men moving the desks like they're real people. And when I hear people speaking another language on the bus in Calgary, I'm not going to feel pissed-off or threatened. I'm going to remember being in their shoes.

I wish I was more sensitive, more sympathetic. But I'm glad that I've been able to have some experiences that, even though they've been tough, have helped me to learn a little bit of empathy. It's slow, you know? It's a lot slower than I want it to be. But I'm getting there.