The Work at Work

[Guest guest]

's asked for input on a book she's writing about how we've used The Work in

the workplace. I submitted this for consideration, and felt like sharing it

with any of you who might be interested. It turned out to be one of my funnest

jobs.

- - - - -

I applied for a summer position at Holden Village, a 500-bed retreat center I've

very much enjoyed spending time at. I was disappointed when I didn't get any of

the three positions I'd applied for, instead they offered me the 'head of

laundry.' That sure didn't sound very fun, washing dirty sheets and towels all

summer. But I really wanted to spend a summer at this fantastic place, so I

took the position.

I did 'the work', investigating the belief that it wouldn't be a fun job. Well,

how could I be sure it wouldn't be fun. How could I know for sure it wouldn't

be one of the funnest summers of my life? I couldn't be sure.

Upon arriving there, one of the first things I did was give 'the laundry' a new

name, now it would be known as 'The Linen Technology Center' or 'LinT' for

short. And rather than be known as 'head of laundry' I chose the title 'C.E.O.

of Lint' (C.E.O. = Crazy Egomaniac Overseer) Okay, yeah, maybe this could be

fun.

I would have anywhere from 2 to 8 volunteers helping me do the laundry for this

retreat center, once a copper mining town in the North Cascades mountains of

Washington state. It was powered by a small hydroelectric power plant, and we

had limited use of the large industrial dryers as they took up so much power.

Instead we spent a good part of our work day outside, pinning up and taking down

sheets and pillow cases. Outside, breathing in the beautiful clean air,

gorgeous mountains, birds singing, squirrels chattering, deer coming by now and

then to check us out. Here I'd thought I'd been assigned to a boring job, and

instead I found myself in the Garden of Eden! I felt sorry for my poor fellow

workers who got stuck in the kitchen or office positions, jobs I'd initially

applied for.

There was still one aspect of my job that I was really struggling with though.

We'd check the bath and hand towels and wash cloths, before putting them into

the washers, in case they needed to be pretreated. And oh my, did some of them!

They looked like people had gone hiking in the mud, and come back and wiped

their boots off with their towel. Or worked on some of the village vehicles and

used their hand towels to wipe the grease off. Like someone had dyed their hair

purple, then grabbed a towel to wrap around their head. And the blood on some

lof them, were they wiping up a murder scene! I was getting more and more

upset.

People should not leave such messes on the towels. Is that true? Yeah ! ! !

Can I know for sure that's true? hmmmmmmmmmm. I wasn't 100% sure, maybe 99.9%,

but there was that mustard seed size bit of doubt.

Then one morning I came across one of the worst towels I'd seen up til then, a

grimy mess of dirt and grease. I held it up to show one of the volunteers, to

get some sympathy. Instead, they responded with a 'that kinda looks like Abe

Lincoln.' Huh? That wasn't supposed to be their response, they were supposed

to validate and reinforce my 'story.'

I took a look at it from their perspective, and yeah I could kinda see old Abe.

Then another volunteer said it looked like Snoopy. Then everyone was offering

up interpretations. Surprisingly, it was kind of fun. I got the stain remover

solution out, and went to work treating and scrubbing, but it didn't bother me

so much this time.

A few minutes later someone said 'hey, look at this one.' And we all looked up

to see another towel, this one splattered with dirt. People offered up their

interpretations again, and then we started interpretting peoples'

interpretations, like doing a Rorschach test. We started laughing so hard at

all this, playfully giving each other a hard time at what each of us were seeing

in the images. Rorschach came up with the exercise as a way to examine

personality characteristics and emotional functioning - kind of like 'the work'

does.

I took one of the stained towels that someone had interpreted in a very amusing

way, and hung it on the wall, and on a piece of paper wrote the 'title' of the

piece, affixed that to the towel, and took a step back. It looked like a piece

of art! From that moment forward, we started getting excited whenever we

eagerly dug through the bins, trying to find especially stained towels and

washcloths, hoping to come up with amusing titles worthy of being hung in our

new art gallery. Oh my were we having a fine time! And to think I once held

the unexamined belief this was going to be a boring job!

When we had enough 'pieces' for our 'gallery', I made signs to post around the

village, announcing that there would be an art show at Linen Technology that

Friday. Villagers would ask me about it, but not wanting to give away too much,

I just encouraged them to come, mentioning there'd be refreshments.

Friday afternoon I made cookies, lemonade and ice tea. An announcement was made

at dinner that evening, inviting everyone to check out the art show in the Linen

Technology Center. I set up the refreshments, put on some elegant music,

adjusted the lighting, then sat back and watched people come to our 'stained'

art show. I laugh now as I recall the looks on peoples' faces as they'd come

in, at first surprise, then amusement, then they'd start laughing out loud. I

had to wonder, did any of the people who'd gotten assigned to the job positions

I'd initially applied to get, were they perhaps a tad jealous they didn't get

the fun summer position I'd lucked out in getting?