Finish the Job

Over Christmas Break I had the amazing opportunity that every high school/college aged student loves-making cold, hard cash. My neighbor, Carla,  was doing some major remodeling with some of the buildings her family owned. I asked if she needed any help with the remodel since I was home on break. She readily agreed for me to come over and get to work. I was pretty pumped to be making some of that green dough.

Day 1

The first day was not too hard. I helped Carla clean up what seemed like a million boxes of Christmas decorations. We stacked all of those onto the back of a pickup truck and then drove to a different building to unload all of the boxes yet again. Upon returning to the first building I had yet another list of work to do.  But before I dove into all of that work, I went and ate lunch with my mom. Since I'm not home that often it was nice to sit down and catch up on a variety of things. After lunch, I went back and dove into my list of things to get done. I first moved old window shutters, wagon wheels, as well as a few other assorted items that are used as decorations. I had to lug all of these items up a twisted flight of stairs and stack them neatly. After all of that was upstairs came the extraordinarily fun part- at least for this day. I was instructed to move around 300 old, wooden chairs. Now moving chairs is not that hard of a feat, however these did not fold or bend and I could only carry two chairs at a time.  I had to painstakingly walk back and forth for over 5 hours. I was ready to be done at chair 106, but I kept going to finish the job. 

P.S.  I got 23, 659 steps today!

Day 2 

Guess what?!?!? I moved more chairs today. I flipped places with chairs and benches so the room would be organized differently for an upcoming event. However, I could not figure out how the benches fit together to maximize the space. Carla had told me it was like a jigsaw puzzle and I now realized that it was very true.  Once I finally figured out the puzzle, I moved on to the next task at hand. I had to move an old filing cabinet, a desk chair, and a box of metal scraps. I moved the box of metal scraps to the back of the pickup with ease, the chair was really awkward but I prevailed. The filing cabinet was a slightly different story. It was four high and an old style one which meant that it was extremely heavy. I leaned it against the tailgate and used it as a lever to force it onto the truck. Once everything was on the truck I went to the metal dumpster to unload. I backed right up to the dumpster, threw off the box, chucked the chair, and flipped off the filing cabinet into the dumpster. 

Day 3 

Carla told me that she had a real job for me today! She took me to the main room that was going to be remodeled. She showed me that all of the carpet needed to be ripped up.  I shook my head in understandment and started working. I started pulling up my first piece of carpet and it was a little rough but I kept going. The second and third pieces got a little harder but I kept going. Eventually, I could barely pull the pieces of carpet up. I kept cutting the pieces smaller and smaller and was barely getting anything done. I was ready to quit. I was tired and I wasn’t  getting anywhere. I told myself to keep going for a few more tries. On this piece of carpet it had a niche in it that I was able to grip and pull on. It pulled surprisingly easily and I was able to get up a larger amount of carpet before. I kept going pulling and tugging on the carpet and even though it was painful and tiring, I finished the job.

After all of this work I learned a couple valuable lessons. 

1. I never want to go into carpet laying. I could never do that for a living, it was horrible. 
2. No matter how much you dislike your job, finish the job. I could have quit and told Carla that I just couldn't do it anymore. I could have told her that it wasn't for me and walked out. But I thought what kind of image would that leave Carla. What if I needed a favor from Carla in the future? No matter what, keep persevering and keep going. It may be rough and tough but it will always be worth it in the end. 
3. P.S. Carla donated a basket of goodies to be auctioned off at the Fort Wayne Farm Show! 

Never Give Up, Dillon