Twenty years ago I smelled like the butt end of an ashtray, and I mean that literally. I was the office manager at a small insurance adjustment firm, and the owner smoked six to eight maduro cigars a day. If you’ve never smelled one, a maduro doesn’t drift past you. It settles into your clothes, your hair and the paper on your desk.
I took any errand that got me out of that office and still paid me. One of them was depositing checks. There was a branch closer to the office, but I went downtown to the one inside an office building, because that building’s lobby had a fountain in it.
As long as I could get away with
I’d get lunch at the little café beside the fountain and sit for fifteen or twenty minutes, as long as I thought I could get away with. Some days the water ran hard and loud, and some days it was quieter, but it was always peaceful. People in shirts and ties rode the escalator past me, laughing and talking. The air didn’t smell like anything.
I didn’t have much going for me professionally then. What I had was that seat by the water and a small, stubborn thought: maybe one day I could do something different. When you spend your days in a smoke-filled office taking calls from people waiting on money that hasn’t come, your world shrinks to the size of that room. That one building held dozens of careers I could have built.
A dime an hour
The fountain gave me a picture of something better, but it took something uglier to get me moving.
One day at the copier, the owner told me he was giving me a raise. I was excited for about half a second, which is how long it took me to do the math. It was a dime an hour. Four dollars a week. One extra lunch out a month.
That’s when I stopped wishing and started working on myself. I read more. I took the job seriously, even though I didn’t like it. I visited a Toastmasters group a couple of times. I found a mentor. And I started to see that the job I hated was teaching me things: accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, reports, vendors, and angry clients who were waiting on their insurance checks and still hadn’t been paid. I was building skills I didn’t know were transferable, because I didn’t know yet that I could take them anywhere.
If I’d landed the corporate job in my first year there, I think I would have failed. It wouldn’t have been for lack of ability. I didn’t know what I could do, and I didn’t understand why the better place was better. I wouldn’t have appreciated it. The miserable years gave me something to measure against.
Two blocks
I eventually left Oklahoma for almost a decade, and I never expected to come back. Then the company I loved there was sold, and a job offer brought me home.
My office now is two blocks from that fountain.
It hit me on a lunchtime walk one day. I had a strong sense that I’d been here before, and then I realized I had. I thought about the young man on that bench and the career I’ve had since, a career I love. I still think about it often.
I believe God’s fingerprints are all over this. He wanted good for me the whole time. But I don’t think he was going to carry me out of that office while I sat still. The fountain was me slowing down long enough to hear there was more. The dime an hour was when I started doing my part.
I’ve been back to the fountain a couple of times since. I don’t need what it gave me anymore. I know who I am now. If I walked in today, I’d probably still eat at that little café and listen to the water. This time on my own lunch hour.
