Dedication and Work

There is a janitor in our floor in my office; she is in charge of the 2 floors. Her duty sheet is hung in the restroom and she dutifully cleans everything in that place to perfection and enters her times in that sheet everyday. Her duty schedule is every hour starting from 8:30 AM – 5:30 PM. I was marveled by the sense of duty or let’s say the dedication that she has for her work. For the nature of the work is not something one can really feel good about, (No, It is a painful job according to me to clean others toilets)



The reason for this post is not that I want to preach something about her job, but because today, when I saw her precision of carrying out her task for a brief moment I was reminded of many people whom I have seen admired so far.


For example:


While I was in my Class 7, I had an English teacher and her work was to teach us English which she did like rest of any normal teachers in the school. But there was a particular quality in her that I noticed and find it interesting to point it out.


Most teachers so far for my English course would just correct the answers and when it came to the Essay writing and letter writing section would just put a tick and allot some marks and move ahead. But this teacher of mine had all the patience to mark the lines which she found erroneous and corrected the sentence in red ink. It used to make my paper too colorful :P with all the red marks here, there and everywhere. But I have learnt a lot in the process, because my goal in her subject used to now be that she should not be able to point anything with that red ink. Though I did not succeed in that, but I learned the subject well.


If she was like the rest of the teachers I would have never realized the mistakes that I did so often. She once called me to her chamber and advised me on things that were of little importance to her and guided me to write more, read more… Once my father happened to see my English papers and said that she was a good teacher who wants you to learn the right things sooner and also told me to think about the effort that she had put in her work or dedication that she had in it, she never minded straining herself so much to correct the sentences not only for my paper but for the 40+ students in the class.


My First mentor in my first company and first project was also someone who had an incredible amount of dedication for her work. She was the one who taught me that even when you think you have nothing to work on… Evaluate your work and find out things that can be smoothened, streamlined and add value, create utilities for the tasks that you repeatedly do and keep it handy. I saw her coming to office to finish some of the clean up on databases after she had resigned and was serving the notice period. It was such a rare sight to see when someone had already resigned and is termed as a free bird was in office on a Sunday trying to clean up and make things perfect from her end.


I saw my father sometimes working late into nights to prepare a balance sheet as the financial year end approaches and his part time workload increases and my mother sitting next to him without any complaints. And my father went about his work with utmost concentration and precision of calculating the figures, drawing the lines and putting them in paper. Once I happened to ask my mother if she is ever angry when my father is working late into the night, she simply said that he who enjoyed doing this and she finds that dedication towards one’s work is one of the qualities that one must develop at a very early stage. She said that we may not find the success always, but always a satisfaction of having done the work well enough.


I had a friend from School and she also had this special thing in her which actually endeared her more to me, At any given point of time, given any task, her full focus was on the task at hand and it was a treat to watch her sometimes when she worked.


All these people, may not be great achievers but have one thing in common, they have a satisfied soul. Happiness stems from the fact that one has achieved what they set out to achieve, no matter how small the goal is- but they have given everything to ensure it reaches the perfection it deserves. We should strive to work in a manner just not to finish the work at hand, but give the work its due respect, that respect comes back in the satisfaction that you get after you see the results of your effort.
I am sure there are many people in this world with the same zest and dedication towards their work and for all those people it’s a hats off from my end, because it’s your efforts that make this place beautiful and proud to be in… Thank you and a parting that I have tried and always will do my best in whatever task I take up