Why Do I Do This To Myself

I saw my reflection in the side glass of our GMC truck. I was wearing a giant sun hat adorned with an American flag and I was sure that I was blending right in with the construction crew who was getting their day started.

As I sipped my barely drinkable cup of Quick Trip coffee, I questioned what I was doing in Texas and why I was trying to master my craft as a field ops guy…

A couple months ago, I received a request from one of our department heads to send an Ops team to Dallas, Texas, to assist our deployment partners with the rollout of a new program. The job was going to take a minimum of a couple weeks—and up to four months to complete—once we properly understood the scope. We quickly drafted a plan and a budget to send an exploratory team of three guys to Texas for one week each. Then we would regroup. Right now, it was my week to fill in.

The tasks were simple and arguably under my paygrade. We started each day by taking a 30-mile trip to a yard that was mostly dirt. Here, we towed our daily projects back to the warehouse for service, washing, airing up the tires, and getting them ready to roll out to a convenience store in the area. By utilizing my truck driver skills, I was able to back the 20’ trailer into a parking spot near the front of the store like a pro. Once onsite at the trailer’s future home, a large LG screen would be installed and an EV charger would replace the hitch at the trailer’s tongue. After all is said and done, the biggest challenge of the day is staying properly hydrated and not crashing the truck and trailer in Dallas traffic.

As I sat in the QT parking lot thinking about the day ahead, I asked myself why I put myself in these situations where I am baking in the Texas sun, suffering all day in the New Hampshire rain, or working through the night out front of a stadium in Phoenix, Arizona to load another trailer? And even a better question is why do I enjoy every moment of it?

I pride myself on being a leader that doesn’t ask my teammates to do anything that I haven’t done myself. If the job is going to suck for one of us, it’s going to suck for all of us. There are easier ways to make a living, but I would argue that the beer never tastes better than the one that you enjoy with your teammates as you commiserate about the ass kicking day you just had.

I am not sure where my career is headed, but I am positive that being a good teammate as well as a leader that the crew can look forward to working with will always be part of my gigs moving forward.

On to the next one,

Michael