BY: HECTOR VELAZQUEZ EQUIPMENT MANAGER, WALNUT CREEK C.C.
Professionalism and
work/home life balance
F
irst, I want to start off with a special thank you to Craig McKinley for asking me to write an article about professionalism and work/home life balance. I touched on this topic during Technician Day at Walnut Creek Country Club a while back. I will start off with professionalism in the shop because that is the easier topic to dive into. After five years traveling across the country full time, we visited and worked in a good amount of golf course maintenance facilities. Sometimes it was just a quick hello and other times it was for tech training or shop renovations. All too often I would walk in a shop that was not exactly the safest place to be in, to put it kindly. Being a mechanic, we are often labeled as a “Grease Monkey” because people picture a shop that is dirty and grimy with junk all over the workbench and reels laying around everywhere and a mechanic that’s wearing grease stained clothes and holey pants. We do not have to be a “Grease Monkey” just because we are mechanics. It is up to us to change that stigma and to be seen as a professional. It does not cost anything to clean up our operation. We can organize
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Michigan Golf Course Superintendents Association
| www.migcsa.org
