Whistle While You Work

I have been meaning to write about this for a couple weeks now. You know what they say, "Better late than never".

When Sarah and I were in Puerto Rico we visited Old San Juan. This is, as I described before, a very hilly town with narrow streets and old buildings. It is quite beautiful....until the sun starts to set. The stores start to close up shop around 6:30-7pm and they each place on the sidewalk their bags and bags of trash. LOADS OF STINKY REFUSE!!!! Seriously, this beautiful town turned to a stinky dump in a matter of minutes. The trash was piled up everywhere, there were suddenly rats and cockroaches everywhere and the smell was less than appealing.

Then came the trash truck with the trash men. I loved these guys! They have, quite possibly, the worst job in all of San Juan. Dealing with other peoples garbage in a tight space. This was not anything like picking up garbage in American Fork, Utah. At one point, one of the plastic bags from a restaurant broke open and spilled onto the street below. The trash man scooped it with his hands the best he could and then moved on. Why do I love these guys? Their entire approach to this awful task was admirable. Firstly, their truck was painted with tropical and paradisical flowers. The stereo was blaring reggae music and the workers were dancing and singing along. There is a great lesson we can learn from these people.

Attitude is everything. I manage two teams for PMI, customer service and saves. My team constantly deal with quitters, whiners, excuse makers, liars and the like. Some of the people we deal with are quite rude, profane and real a**holes! It would be very easy for the weak minded to allow these people to dictate our attitudes. Some of my workers may rather have the San Juan trash job on some days! Regardless of the people we have to deal with or the trash we have to shovel, each of us have the ability to determine our own attitudes. While it can be difficult at times, we can not forfeit our control to other people or circumstances. This is not always easy to do, but it can be done. I have this down...generally...but the trash men of San Juan have it mastered!