WordSisters

Tag: Elizabeth di Grazia

  • It Happened Like This …

    Crystel and Tio Scott Photo by Tia Anna

    Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how I choose to look at it, I have many personal examples when I hold employee meetings or talk with my children regarding undesirable behavior.

    This past week I met with employees in Grand Forks, North Dakota to discuss profanity in the workplace. In meetings, I first try to establish that I’m not much different from who they are. My position today as a Human Resources Manager was not where I started. I began my career more than thirty years ago, running an inserting machine on the night shift, was promoted to lead person, then Supervisor.

    I told the employees that when I was a supervisor, I would say,“What did you f..k up now?” when I dealt with a challenging employee who was constantly making mistakes. My boss informed me that my language was not appropriate. Even so, the next night before I even knew it, before I could stop myself, I said the exact same thing to the exact same employee who once again had screwed up. This time, my boss made it clear that I would be fired if it happened again.

    I had heard that profanity was a sign of a limited vocabulary. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that it took me concerted effort to stop swearing. It certainly was embedded behavior.

    Juan Jose

    Recently, our employee meeting was focused on hygiene in the workplace. Our manufacturing plants are Safe Quality Food certified, meaning that we are held to a high standard when it comes to conditions on our manufacturing floor. I used the example of my father coming to one of my brother’s football games without changing from his farm clothes. They laughed watching my face turn red at the memory. “Whatever you are doing before you come to work, change into your work uniform and your work shoes. Don’t bring the dirt from the fields in here.”

    “It happened like this,” I said, to Juan Jose and Crystel, when I was teaching them about why bullying was wrong. I began by telling them how I bullied a kid mercilessly and often was in fights in middle school. “Did you ever run away from home?” Juan asked. “Once,” I said. “I was going to hop a train. I can’t imagine you or Crystel ever running away. Even parents want to be adopted by me and Mama Jody.” I paused. Well, unless it’s drugs, alcohol, or sex, I thought but didn’t say. Then again, if that happens, we’ll deal. I’ve got examples of that too.  

     

  • It Wasn’t My Finest Moment

    It Wasn’t My Finest Moment

    “It wasn’t my finest moment,” I told the kids. Juan and Crystel were eating at our kitchen island.

    Juan looked up briefly. “I was thinking about that,” he said.

    Crystel just smiled. She likes a faulty mother.

    Jody was gone for the weekend.

    Our family volunteers at Loaves and Fishes at Wood Lake Lutheran church once month. Loaves and Fishes is a free meal program that has served those in need across Minnesota since 1981. We’ve been volunteering once a month for three years. “It’s our church,” I tell the kids. For various reasons, we haven’t found a traditional home church. “Church is about giving and receiving, and this is what our family does,” I further explained.

    The evening before was our ‘church’ night. When we arrived to volunteer, I was disheartened to see that the cook had changed. I don’t know why that would surprise me. It’s less turnover then I have at work. This would have only been the third cook in three years. That’s not so bad. I just wasn’t ready for it. The cook is a non-profit hired chef. The chef plans menus, orders food and manages the volunteers, who sign up online as I did.

    Juan, Crystel, and I put on our aprons and hairnets. I asked the twenty-something cook what he’d like us to do.

    Juan turned to me and said, “What did he say?”

    “We are going to serve coffee.”

    His eyes lit up. “All three of us?” His voice was full of hope.

    The last time we were at ‘church’, I let Juan skip out and go home to finish a homework assignment. Wood Lake Lutheran Church is only three blocks from our home. There was plenty of volunteers and he wasn’t being particularly helpful that evening. Tonight, I had told them before we arrived that if anyone left early, this time it would be Crystel. It was her turn. That was my mistake. Allowing Juan and Crystel to leave early. After all, this was church. We were here for the sermon.

    Most times there is a shortage of volunteers and there isn’t even a question of leaving early. Everyone has a job. Everyone is needed. I often had pointed this out to Juan and Crystel, “What if we wouldn’t have come tonight? Who would have helped with dishes? Or served? Or cleaned up?”

    Juan knew what it meant if three of us were going to serve coffee.

    “You know,” he started. “I know it’s Crystel’s turn to leave early and I’m okay with that. But maybe, just maybe, you could serve coffee by yourself?”

    “We’ll see,” I said.

    A finer moment.

    There were five servers on the line and one person in back to wash dishes. I left Juan and Crystel to serve coffee while I went in back to dry dishes. After a flood of people went through the line to be served, I came back to check on Juan and Crystel.

    Crystel raised her eyebrows. “Just wait,” I said. “I’m going to have something to eat and we’ll see.”

    I regarded the five volunteers on the serving line standing with a utensil in hand or using the counter as support. I got my tray and sat down.

    “Okay, Crystel,” I said. “You can leave.”

    She jumped up and was gone.

    “What about me?” Juan asked. “Look, they’re not doing anything.” He nodded to the servers.

    I had already noticed them and it was starting to irritate me. The young people on the line were probably fulfilling a service learning requirement for college. They weren’t real volunteers … like us. They needed to be here. They were getting something out of it.

    “Go ahead.”

    From where I sat, I watched the clean dishes pile up because there wasn’t anyone drying and putting away. I served the occasional person who wanted coffee, milk, or water. The pile of dishes continued to grow. It occurred to me that if I wouldn’t have let Juan and Crystel leave that I could have been back there helping. Now I was bound to my station.

    When I got home, I startled the children. They looked at the time.

    “You’re done early?” They both said at once.

    “No. I left.”

    “What?!?”

    “I left.” Even as I said it, I was wondering, who does that? Who leaves a job they volunteered for just because they got mad that people weren’t helping? If you’re a volunteer, aren’t you a volunteer because you love giving back? Because you love to be of service?

    “Volunteers were just standing there, and dishes were piling up in back and I decided that I wasn’t going to dry them. I just left.”

    Juan and Crystel didn’t say anything.

    It took me twenty-four hours, but I realized that we had gotten away from the message, the spirit of volunteering, of giving back.

    “Guys, no one goes home early anymore. No matter how many volunteers come,” I said. “It’s what it is. It’s our church.”

  • Only In My Dreams

    Only in my dreams do I sprint toward the hurdle. When I’m two feet away, I bring my right leg up to my butt and quickly extend it over the bar. It’s a beautiful thing, a split in midair. I continue scaling hurdle after hurdle until my final sprint across the finish line.

    I’ve never done hurdles. I was the high schooler who after running the anchor in a relay or the 200-yard dash, went to the restroom, pulled a cigarette out of my gym bag, and smoked in the last stall.

    Last week, I didn’t smell the tell-tale odor of cigarette smoke at Juan Jose’s conference track meet. No girl was hiding in the last stall.

    I love watching Juan, Crystel, and their teammates run. I’ve known most of the team from kindergarten. At the meets, I can tell who the runner is by their body build, their stance and style before they even hit the straight away, their legs pumping up and down, their breath filling their lungs, and their arms propelling them forward. I stand twenty-five or fifty yards from the finish line, hollering, “Go Richfield, Go!”

    It doesn’t matter to me where the runners place. It’s their heart that I love. I’m drawn to the winners and the losers, who give every ounce of energy that they have to the race. I’m drawn to the runners who strategize in the 800 and mile, who plan their break away, two hundred or a hundred meters from the finish. I’m drawn to the runners who starts at an all out run in the 200 and 400-meter dash, who have expended it all by the time they cross the finish line.

    That is courage.

    This track year, I was particularly drawn to a little guy with red hair, a sixth grader, who lined up for long distance races, who had to know that he was going to end up last or second to last and ran every race anyway. He stayed true to his nature and when he was one hundred meters from the finish line, he sprinted as if he was going to be first. I imagined him levitating, running on air those last one hundred meters. His feet were no longer on the ground, he had sprouted wings.

    I remember that feeling. I quit smoking my 2-pack-a day habit in my mid-twenties, and started running marathons. I was like that red-headed sixth grader. Regardless of where I would place, I sped up towards the end of a race until my feet were off the ground and I was flying into the finish.

    My days of levitating are most likely over due to a knee injury.

    I’m okay with that. I can push myself in other arenas.

    I’ll cheer on others. Celebrate with them.

    The 200-meter race, is usually one of the last events of the meet. It was wonderful to witness the Richfield runners being first in every heat except Juan who was second in his.

    Placing last, first, or second, it doesn’t matter. What matters is heart.