A Man Named Stewart

My first job was bagging groceries in high school - for over two years. So, when I worked in a sheet metal shop after that, it was…a bit of a shift in skill...and environment.

If you’ve never worked in construction, the culture can be intense, and even outright toxic. Big egos, griping, arguments over fairness, teasing, and criticism. And, in my experience, it’s amplified when your extended family owns the business.

“Well, boys, we got another heir to the throne,” someone said on my first day, referring to my family that owned the company. All eyes in the shop shifted to me with skepticism. I felt small.

The shop was huge, and you could taste metal in the air. In the past, I had helped build a deck, did some demolition work, and landscaping. But, there were so many things I had never even seen in here before, tools I wasn’t familiar with - a metal press, plasma cutter, plasma table, acetylene tanks, and welding equipment. The list goes on.

I had no idea where to start. Is someone going to tell me what to do? Am I given assignments? Do I follow someone around and learn? No one was jumping to help me. I asked, and the shop boss told me, “Just start sweeping.”

And, that’s what I did for weeks and weeks. I swept the shop, and did odd end tasks when I was told. It was easy, boring, and I was more or less left alone.

Until one day, a man named Stewart approached me, and offered to teach me how to weld. I could tell he was empathetic towards me, and that I was intimidated - so much so, I didn’t ask questions. But, within an hour of spending time with him, I could weld a solid line on low and high gauge steel. As time went on, he also showed me how to use a miter saw, metal press, and how to drive a forklift. But, my personal favorite was the plasma cutter.

He was warm and friendly with an endearing Scottish accent. Sometimes I would prompt him for a Shrek impression, and ask him to say something like, “Look at his wee little boots,” and we’d laugh. Most days, we would eat lunch together; he would tell me about growing up in Scotland, and his time living in Canada before he came to the US.

Not long after that, I was alone in the shop one day. Everyone had left to do an installment, and there I was, doing my normal sweeping. I came across a wall near the metal press where a lot of spare pieces and sheets of metal were kept. And, I had recently heard someone complaining about how disorganized it was.?

I thought, “Yeah, it would definitely be better if this was organized on a rack.” So, I put my push-broom down, and made a rack out of the spare materials, mostly using a welder and metal press. Everyone will use this every day, and no one told me to make it. I was proud that I showed initiative.

When they returned to the shop, someone grumbled, “Finally, you did something useful.”

The pride I took in my work dissipated almost instantly. My contribution, though admittedly small, felt reduced to a meaningless nothing.

A couple days later, the shop boss pulled me to the side. He said he needed me to fill an order for some guard rails, and it needed to be done by tomorrow. I had no idea what he was talking about, and asked him to explain it to me.

“You need to go to the steel mill, pick it up, bring it back here, make the guard rails, and have it ready on the dock to be loaded up by tomorrow morning.”

I told him I had never been to the steel mill, and asked, “How do I pick it up?”

He said with sarcasm, “Ya take the truck…” he paused, then continued, “Just drive up to the bay, hand them this order, tell ‘em who it’s for, they’ll load it, you bring it back, then you get started.”

I asked which truck I was supposed to take, and he said, “You’ll need to take the Isuzu, the beams are 20 feet long.” I looked at the truck, it was much larger than anything I had ever driven. Imagining the amount of steel that was going to be loaded, and driving it through downtown in the city was giving me anxiety already. But, what choice did I have?

I went to the steel mill, drove into the bay, and followed my instructions. It really was as easy as it was explained to me. But also, driving the truck loaded down with steel gave me as much anxiety as I thought it would. The steel would shift, bang and clang with every bump in the road, but it stayed tied down.

When I got back to the shop, I unloaded the steel beams with the fork lift one by one, positioning them on the miter saw at 45 degree angles. Stewart was watching over me from a distance, and he walked over to stop me. He said, “Let’s see what these cuts look like before you do anymore.”

We moved the cut pieces to a table, and tried to weld them together. There was a larger gap than there should have been, making it difficult to bind together. Stewart showed me where to make some corrections when I was cutting to shorten the gap. He asked what my plans were, and I explained that I was going to cut everything first, and then do all the welding together.

He said, “The better thing would be to cut each piece individually, and then weld it right after.” Because if there were adjustments that needed to be made, I could make them as I go. If I cut them all wrong, then all the material could be wrong, and all of the binding will be difficult.

I told him I was nervous about being pressed for time, and he encouraged me, “At the end of the day, it’s better to have a quality product that you need more time to complete, than a finished product of lower quality.” I thanked him, and went back to work.

I found a rhythm while I was cutting, inspecting, and welding. I stopped doubting myself, and started trusting the process. 3:45 rolled around, and I needed to make one more, which meant I would be done in time at 4:00. I finished the last piece, and stood there in relief.?

Stewart was of course still there to help stage the guard rails on the dock. He slapped me on the shoulder, and let out a chuckle.

The shop boss and many others came into the shop from an installment, and they gathered at the dock. One of them stopped to ask me, “Did you do all that today?”

“Yes,” I said.

He nodded, and didn’t say anything. While it wasn’t necessarily what I was looking for in terms of approval, I realized that not having criticism in this environment was its own form of approval.

I walked to my car in the parking lot, Stewart at my side. He looked at me and said in his Scottish accent, “Ya worked hard today,” and I beamed with pride.

“Thanks for all your help.”

When I think of that summer with Stewart, I’m reminded of how important it is to have a trusted relationship with a mentor or leader. The mentor has to be patient and hear concerns with sincerity - who knows when to intervene, and when to allow someone their own space for learning. The mentee needs to be open, unguarded, and resilient in the face of adversity.

One thing is for sure though, were it not for Stewart, it would've been a long and boring summer of sweeping.