Who would have thought that 7 years later

One of the nicer elements of working for the company I do is that they are relatively community oriented. Once a year the company sponsors a day were everyone is encouraged to volunteer a day of their life to various projects. At the local level there are also many activities along the same lines. Our office has recently partnered with a foundation in St. Paul that is dedicated to providing social services that the government does not provide for. One of these services is a day care for disadvantaged youths who are mostly the children of immigrants, single mothers, or the working poor. At this facility the children are taken care of, taught the basics, and they participate in activities that help them to become well adjusted kids. All around it seems to be a very productive program that is valued by the community. The organization it self does not always understand their own impact.

To illustrate this they told us during a tour and info session about a play they had the children put on for their families. It was a very simple activity with songs, decorations made by the kids, and held in the facilities small gymnasium. Small is the word here, the room is maybe 80 ft by 30 ft tops. The day of the show the staff had put out some refreshments, chairs, the typical setting for such an event. They were amazed to find the children not only brought their parents, but also their brothers and sisters, grandparent, aunts and uncles, and anyone else that could make it from their family. Now, besides the fact that the day care did not have the seating or refreshments for some many people, it was one of the first times the staff realized how big a part their day care played in these peoples lives and how positive effect it has.

This is one of many of the services the foundation as a whole provides to the residents in St. Paul and my company has decided to focus many of our volunteer activities with them. The first activity this spring was getting the outdoor play area ready for the day care. General labor – which believe it or not was what everyone wanted – moving dirt and wood chips, as well as getting a garden area ready. The day was actually pretty good for the work, overcast and a bit drizzly. It made a mess but kept you cool while working. We started the day taking a tour of the facilities and hanging out with the kids for ½ hour or so; then it was off to work. The amount of wood chips to move was incredible, there were easily 3 small dump truck loads. Before lunch we were lucky to have moved maybe a quarter of the amount needed to complete the task and it was looking like we may not be able to accomplish all we had set out to do.

Interestingly there was a bobcat on site but no driver; he was due after lunch. I had actually put down on my application that I had a lot of experience operating skid-steer loaders and we had joked about getting the keys and going to town. Well after lunch we found the driver wasn’t coming anymore, and we worried that we would not finish. Well, I actually got the ok and the keys! I hadn’t driven a bobcat in like 7 years! I put the special skill down more as a joke than anything…. But to be honest it came back with in ½ hour of driving and it was a good thing it did too. I was able to get all of the chips moved to the general location they were needed in an hour and ½ and it was easy to spread them around from there. And it was nice for me because by this time it was getting cold and the bobcat was inclosed with a heater. LOL

Who would have thought that skills I developed almost a decade ago would have come in so handy now. I spent a lot of time and effort to get a bachelor’s degree and here I was – in my first job that required higher education – driving a bobcat again. And it was nicer bobcat than I had ever driven before. I was used to 25+ year old models that uses levers and clunky controls, that have no heaters, and smell funny. This was a dream machine with a small computer controlled ignition, hydraulic controlled parking break, and an environmental control system including air conditioning. Nice. It was fun getting in and playing but all in all it was really nice to do some thing for the day care that they could not have done on their own. They just don’t have the budget for niceties like landscaping.