3 minute read
Remember when: Hard Work
By Janice Lane Palko
Since we’ve just celebrated Labor Day, and it is an election year, we’re hearing a lot about “hard-working Americans” and getting contrasting viewpoints about work in America. Some say that the American Dream, working hard and getting ahead, is a delusion, while others believe that, with hard work, you can achieve your goals in life. I’ll leave that debate to others so that I can talk about hard work. What do you consider to be hard work?
If you asked an older person or if you ever had a conversation with your parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents, their idea of hard work may be quite more laborious or less savory than anything people think of today.
For instance, one of my maternal great-grandfathers Oliver Hughes, who was alive until I was 12 and was born in the late 1800s, went to work in the mills at the age of six. His job was to bring water to the millworkers. Can you imagine getting a six-year-old up for work and sending them to a dangerous mill? We fret about sending kids that age to school!
His son, my grandfather, Floyd Hughes, went to work at 14 as an errand boy for Eastman Kodak. My paternal grandfather, Albert Lane, went to work for the P&LE Railroad at a young age because by the time he was sixteen, his parents had both died. A relative told me that my grandfather used to walk from his Manchester home on the North Side to the P&LE terminal across our frozen rivers in the winter to save money. My 93-year-old mother-in-law grew up on a farm in Westmoreland County, and her job was to milk the cows—a job that never gives you a day off.
All those jobs were difficult, dangerous, or demanding. We are blessed now not to have the need for young children to go to work or for us to work under unsafe or hostile conditions. So, in this day and age, what does it mean to work hard?
I believe hard work means going the extra mile. It means showing up for work early, staying later if needed, and meeting deadlines. It means whatever you are doing, doing it with excellence. For instance, when I worked for Westinghouse back in the 1980s, there was a secretary who answered our department’s phones, but she sat a bay one over from the rest of our department. When she took a message, rather than bringing it over immediately, she would hold on to it until she collected several messages, and then she would bring them over and deliver them to the people in our department. She was too lazy to walk the 10 feet after each message. This resulted in people waiting for important calls or some of the messages between callers and the workers getting crossed, resulting in much confusion and more difficulty.
Unless you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth, most of us have had to pay our dues. We’ve had to swallow our pride, start on the bottom, work our way up, and do things we’d rather not do to achieve our dreams. I know I had to. When I was in high school, I was given the disgusting task of cleaning the bathroom at the Giant Eagle on McKnight Road. It was the store where Panera is now, and it was not the nice, gleaming bathrooms that you find in the stores today. This was like a third-world toilet. But I did it. Many of you probably have probably had a similar experience.
Ask your friends what their worst job was, and you will get stories told in great detail, much like women swapping labor and delivery stories.
Though the type of work we do may have changed or improved, hard work is still an essential ingredient for achieving success in life. In essence, hard work boils down to sacrificing yourself now for your future dreams.
