My Two Best Jobs Ever

"Hardest job you'll ever love."

Allow me to begin by saying I have had my share of jobs.  I have only been fired once – but I deserved it.  At my first job I washed dishes . . . very slowly.  I was thorough, but typically the last person in the restaurant.  The manager must have finished a bottle of wine and a pack of Benson & Hedges Menthol 100 Ultralights waiting for me to finish in the dish room.  Not that I ever stopped moving, I just moved at my own pace – which was much slower than Paul would have liked.

He did me a favor and fired me.

This gave my mother reason to send me kicking and screaming onto an airplane to pick pineapples.  This would be the hardest job I ever worked and the one I loved the most.  It wasn’t that the job was immensely satisfying – it was hot, dirty, grueling field labor.  It was that the job taught me the importance of meeting deadlines, hard work, and valuing your co-workers and their contributions to a team effort.  If one picker fell behind, we all fell behind.  If a co-worker got behind we worked as a team to get them caught up and keep them caught up.  We cheered for every truck we filled and moaned when another was backed in place.

"My brothers from A LOT of different mothers."

We ate as a team, worked as a team, played as a team, and fought as a team.  It wasn’t that we were the best of friends at all times, but we were always a team.  Like brothers, we could fight among ourselves until someone was bloody and crying – but God forbid if anyone else messed with a member of the team.  We circled the wagons and gave the aggressor a thrashing.  The team member may have been a moron, but they were OUR moron.

The hard work gave over to boredom.  Instead of dreading another truck, we cheered its arrival.  Without intent, we nearly set a record for the number of trucks filled in an 8-hour shift.  We sang songs, told stories about home and girls, and made up fiction on the spot for the amusement of the team.

As a team we accomplished more than was possible alone.  These accomplishments would never be recognized by anyone outside of other pickers.  (For months after my return I would pick up a can of pineapple and say, “I might have picked the fruit in this can.”)  But as a team we picked over 100 tons of pineapple every day. 

"Maui Land & Pine, No Ka Oi."

I felt a responsibility to my employer, Maui Land & Pine, to get every piece of fruit into the truck.  A forgotten pineapple was a loss to the company.  I learned to be thorough AND fast in getting a job done.  This feeling of responsibility led me to track down my parents on vacation to beg their permission to allow me to stay an extra month.  This would cut into the beginning of school, but it was necessary.  A wet spring had delayed the ripening of several thousand acres of pineapple and without volunteers willing to stay the fruit would spoil and ML&P would lose millions in revenue.  When my mother came to the phone, breathlessly concerned I had been in an accident, I asked if I could stay longer.  Surprised, she asked, “Why?  I thought you hate it there?”  I explained, “The fruit has got to be picked and it’s my responsibility.”  This may have been the moment she realized that I had learned why she sent me to pick pineapple.  She granted permission and I was grateful she allowed me to finish the job I had started.

The lessons of teamwork, hard work, and a sense of personal accomplishment can be traced to my extended summer on Maui.  I returned as a man who could accomplish anything if I worked hard.

Thanks Mom.

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