Slow and Steady

This blog is meant to be entirely about Madison, but I need to tell you a little about myself.

When I was 16 years old, I got a job as a bagger at the local grocery store (Stewart’s in Roosevelt, Utah). Because the market and store were so small and slow, whenever we had downtime, the baggers would work on “facing” the shelves, which meant pulling everything to the front to create a face.

I was notoriously slow at it. The owner of the store had approached me on multiple occasions about the speed at which I wasn’t getting the job done. After his little pep talk I would always try to be faster, but I was meticulous. Some of the cans weren’t designed to be stacked on top of one another, but if lined up absolutely perfectly then they would stack and look like they were meant to be stacked. Other baggers would skip these sections, or do a half-decent job of it. Not me. I’d perfect it.

To be clear, this isn’t how I try to do my job, but rather it’s who I am. I’ve had people believe that I’m a massive idiot because of the speed at which I completed certain tasks. I’ve had others who have seen the value of doing a job well, and have praised me for it.

This past October, I had the opportunity of volunteering at Madison’s school. The kids had been working on a project that covered the lifecycle of a pumpkin seed and my job was to help groups of kids put the finishing touches on their presentation.

Every few minutes, a different group of six kindergarteners would come over to my station with a few papers that had the lifecycle stages printed on them. They were instructed to color them in with the appropriate colors, then cut out each of the six double circles (think MasterCard symbol) out, then take one the first one and fold it in half around a piece of yarn and glue it to itself. Then continue with the second, third, fourth etc stages in order.

Mrs. Roth had strategically placed one slower kid in each group so that I could assist them to keep the rotation moving. I would cut, color or glue—whatever it took to keep the train rolling! However, despite my willingness, I was slow. I could barely combine my efforts with the slowest of each group to stay on time.

Madison’s group was the last to make its way to my station. I worked my way around the tiny table, giving instructions and making sure no one was eating glue or cutting someone else with scissors. A few kids needed help getting their cutouts to wrap around the yarn properly, which was a common issue. I showed them how they could apply the right amount of glue, and how to press and hold for it to properly seal.

I finally get around to Madison as the other kids are finishing up. Mrs. Roth calls out that there’s only a few minutes before the next rotation. Madison has just barely finished coloring and she’s working with petite scissors designed for her tiny hands. She’s working her way around the first cutout with expert precision. The way she is rounding the edges of this circular paper looks like a machine is doing it. There’s no way she’s going to finish in time, but in that moment I was a super proud daddy. I was grinning ear to ear and almost tearing up. I offered her help, which she accepted and the two of us slowly worked on completing her lifecycle.

This experience was a big one for me. It might not seem like much as you read it, but it was my kid showing signs that maybe she’ll be like me, and for some reason it brought me a lot of joy.

I left that grocery store job 16 years ago, and now I work at Apple, currently the world’s most valuable company. I do something that I love, and while I may not be the fastest at it, I like to think I’m doing a good job.

Categories: Stories

This post was written by AdyEndrus, posted on April 20, 2019 Saturday at 12:32 am