April 06th, 2012

I was thinking this week that we don’t give enough recognition to people who simply do their very best every day.  They may not be superstars in the recognised sense of the word, they may never achieve greater wealth or status than they have already, but they go about their work cheerfully every day, and they do it consistently well.
They are the sort of people who you would want beside you in the trenches (do people still say that these days?); the sort of people who are calm and measured in a crisis; who have had their share of hard knocks, but just keep bouncing back; the sort of people you can rely on to be…well, reliable!
I know a couple of people like that (crikey! only a couple…that’s not very many is it…), one of whom is a carer to my dad.  Now I love my my dad to bits, and he is a positive loveable wee man…but he’s also 90, and he’s run his own business since he was knee high to a grasshopper, and as a result of both combined, he can, at times, be difficult and demanding.  But this lovely lady, we’ll call her Alison (as that is actually her name), has him wrapped around her little finger.
I’ve watched and listened in awe on many an occasion, as she arrives for the fourth time on the same day at 8 in the evening, as cheerful as the first visit she made at 7.30 in the morning, with tales of what she’d had to deal with in the pub (that she also manages) the night before!  My life!  It’s not like she’s paid a fortune for what she does for my dad and others like him.
And he loves her… for her ‘not phased by anything’ attitude, for the fact that she doesn’t need to be asked if she sees a job that needs doing, and the fact that she brightens up his sometimes boring days with her banter and cheeriness.
I know she’s the sort of person who he would have loved to have working with him back in the day – great at keeping the customers happy, seeing and solving problems before they arise, a good hard reliable worker.  I bet we would all welcome a few Alisons into our teams – if only they were easier to find…