Chapter 4 – The Stick
January 1st, 2008 (Story)“You have two options”, I heard as I walked entered the now familiar store. “You can turn around and leave right now, or you can stay and face the consequences.” “What are you talking about?”, I asked Mark. “What do you think I’m talking about?”, he replied. “I had to redo your last two orders and you’re just not building them as fast as we need.”
I had been working here for about three weeks now, so things were just now starting to feel comfortable. I thought I was starting to get the hang of building these computers, but apparently others were not of that same opinion. “Hey”, said Mark, it doesn’t matter to me, but it was Tony who was upset. “Well, I’m not leaving”, I told him. “I didn’t mess those up on purpose.”
I worked the rest of the afternoon with a cloud over my head and my thoughts in another world. Sean came over and tried to start joking around, but I was not amused. He left a few minutes later saying, “What’s your problem, Zeidner?” Just then, I heard a voice yelling at me…”Come here and take a look at this computer…see if you can figure out why it keeps locking up!” With my head hung low, I dragged my feet over to the repair table. Mark was standing there with a big long pipe in his hands. “Whatcha got there?”, I asked. “Oh this? This is my whoop-ass stick” he replied. Suddenly, he and Tony were laughing. I got more and more worried about what the whoop-ass stick was going to be used for. Was that how they punished their bad employees? However, the more I stood there listening to those two cackle on, the more I began to wonder how big of a deal it really was that I had made a mistake. After all, aren’t we supposed to learn from our mistakes and not sulk about them? Little did I know that this would be the beginning of a life-long series of lessons in this area. This was just the first of many incidents that would serve to remind me that I am not and don’t have to be perfect in every area of life.
As I stood there wondering what could be wrong with this computer, Tony began to try and lift the pipe with one arm. “I can get it up, but I can’t keep it up”, he said. “Sounds like a personal problem to me.” Soon, I couldn’t help myself and began to join in the laughter. I decided to go home that evening and watch The Waterboy open up his can of whoop-ass on Colonel Sanders.
Hey, hey, hey! I like the learning from mistakes part and the (we are) not perfect and don’t have to be perfect in every area part. Maybe it’s because failures in my life make God happy—-I can hear Him chuckling as I speak. OK, it makes my “ministry of being a mess” much more fulfilling.
Love you—just the way you are!!
True story? I guess it’s a little rough whenever you start something new for a while atleast.