Being Vocal On Respect

I’m a lot less needy of a person in life anymore. A lot less needy for a lot of things and not because I have everything I could ever want, but because I choose to be.

I had a conversation with my younger brother recently that made vocal one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the last few years. If you treat people in your personal life, work, home, friends, etc., with respect, the majority of them will respond to that in kind.

What do I mean? I mean that I’ve learned, especially over the last few years, that the more honest you are, the more upfront with where you are in life, where you are going, and who you are when engaging with the closest or the newest or farthest people you meet, they are more than likely to respect you.

Go back two years. I was a full-time cook for a corporate cafeteria of a local Cleveland hospital system. I commuted a little over an hour, one-way, for six months to this job to work my 9-5, Monday through Friday. I was also going to culinary school for about 9 credit hours a semester, an endeavor I’d started by going to a single, night community college class in the basement of a campus located in a bad part of Cleveland. I commuted over an hour then.

In any case, that very same workplace, those very same people, the chefs and management, enabled me into a phase of my own personal growth that I was not only lucky to have found, but likely never will again in my entire life. They fostered a workplace environment for the eight or so workers that relied on understanding. Not necessarily discipline or achievement, but also giving space. During my time there, I was allowed my two week leave for Quebec, a single workday off for class, even shortened shifts for others. And still I worked those forty hours and worked them hard. Because I was grateful, because I was needy.

Six months later, I moved to Greater Cleveland, closer to school and closer to graduating. It’s been years now since I said my last goodbyes to those chefs. Some of us keep in touch, all of us moving on with our lives. But I learned then, very strongly, what leadership in our society means, what compassion and understanding and enabling can lead to. Because I had those days. I had days I was late on that hour commute, days I was so exhausted from a chain of 16-18 hour days in either kitchen that literally I told my manager once, “I’m just tired. I’m sorry, I’m tired.” While trying to call in sick to work.

There are people in this world that will make you a better person. There are enablers of all types and in all processes and times of a single lifetime. It’s up to us to respectfully find and sort through the ones at those times and moments that are just that human, that caring, that good to be around.