No One Ever Told Us That: Money and Life Lessons for Young Adults

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

TAKING CARE OF THE PEOPLE WHO TAKE CARE OF YOU

Most of the people I know deal daily with car valets, security personnel, support staff, landscapers, and contractors: plumbers, carpenters, electricians, tech support, all key to our lives in certain specific ways. But many of them are invisible to us. They move in and out of our lives and barely register in a personal sense. We pay our money to them, assuming they do their jobs with various degrees of satisfaction to us. And they remain anonymous to us. We seldom remember their names, and seldom care.

But if you pay a little attention in a personal way to those who take care of you, they can make your lives much easier, much more satisfying.

I live in the city and I park in garages every day, at my office and opposite my home. My first day at our office garage, I stopped as I entered and introduced myself to the attendant, asking his name and where he had grown up.

“Ethiopia,” he said.

“Haile Selassie,” I answered, “the Lion of Judah.” Selassie had been the emperor of Ethiopia and a national hero. The attendant, Solomon, touched his heart and shook my hand, holding it in both of his, the Ethiopian custom. We became friends. Every day I came into the garage, he would put me in the first slot, the front of the line. Why? Almost no other renter in the entire garage ever bothered to talk to Solomon about his life. He told tales of his family at home and the history of chiefs in his blood. He is a proud and worthy man; ...