Peter
Peter’s one of those guys that, when he’s doing a job, that’s just it, he’s doing the job and it’s like there’s nothing else going on in the world. I swear, if Peter was tiling a roof or chopping down a tree or fixing a car and a damned bomb went off right next to him, he probably wouldn’t even look up. That’s just what he’s like when he’s doing a job. Don’t get me wrong, if you want something done he’s the man to ask, no question. But if you kind of want something done but also you want a guy to work with who can chew the fat at the same time, take in the view, stop for a smoke every once in a while then don’t ask Peter.
Sometimes old Peter can even end up costing you money with his hard working. One time, me, Peter and a few other guys were working on a job - some guy wanted us to clear an old orchard, cut down all the dead trees, drag ‘em out, that type of thing. Anyway, the guy who owned the orchard says to us fellas on the first day, ‘This here’s a big job, I’m gonna pay you fellas for two weeks to get this place cleared.’ Now, this guy who owned the orchard, he was a wealthy type, never done a real day’s work in his life, so what he didn’t realize was that as soon as he left, us fellas looked at one another and laughed because we knew the job could be done in no more than four days. Thing is though, the owner guy had barely turned his back to walk away before Peter was hacking away at the first tree like a madman. We all said to him, ‘Peter, we got two weeks work here if we pace this thing out! Slow down!’ But once old Peter gets started on a job, like I say, that’s just it; he’s going hell for leather until it’s done. Now, on this particular job there was about eight of us fellas working and you might think, well let one crazy bastard work until his head falls off, if the rest of you pace yourselves you can still stretch the job out. Funny thing is though, if one fella’s working at a million miles an hour and breaking his back, it’s damn near impossible for the rest of the fellas to work slowly. Don’t ask me why that is but it’s true. Old Peter just worked and worked bringing down those trees in that orchard and at first we all tried to leave him to it and work at our own pace, but it didn’t take long before nobody was chewing the fat anymore as they worked, every man had his head down and in three and half days the job was well done and we’d all missed out on seven and a half days more pay. So the owner comes down at the end of the third day and he’s happy as hell and looking at us like we’re mad and more than that, us fellas are looking at each other like we’re mad, it’s almost like we don’t what came over us. Peter just stood there grinning though, he just wanted to show the owner how quick of a worker he was; he didn’t even care about the money he lost. To him, impressing that damned old owner who didn’t give a damn about him or the next guy was a sort of payment in itself.
I guess what it comes down to is, don’t matter how lazy you are, a man can’t feel right about himself if he sees another man working harder than him, especially if that other man doesn’t say anything to you about it. For example, if one guy’s working harder than the rest but he’s yelling at the others and telling them to hurry up, it’s easy for the other fellas to form a little club against him, sort of make him the enemy and try to ignore what he’s saying. But if a guy is just working hard and not saying anything to the rest of the fellas, sooner or later they’re gonna start feeling wrong about themselves and eventually, all the fellas are gonna end up working at the same pace. That’s just how it is.
-
alcoholandbirth posted this
