| March 15th, 2006 was an important day in that it marked the one year anniversary of my joining Streets Ministries as a full time staff employee. So to celebrate with those of you who said that there would be no way I'd last this long down here in the 38126, I've decided to share with you just how amazing of an achievement this really is. Now before you decide to go "headline and 4" on this edition of Amazing Achievements and attempt to fill all the blanks in for yourself, know that the accomplishment being lauded here is most likely not what you think. |
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769 Vance Avenue, Memphis |
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You see, this has nothing to do with my working for a non-profit organization located in the third poorest urban zip code in the United States with 300 to 400 different kids for a full year without taking a vacation longer than 24 hours in a row. No, this accomplishment is all about the amount of crap I carry around with me every day as a result of "Part B" of my "A and B" job description. Let me explain. |
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| When I was hired on full time, the title, and job, designed specifically for my skill set by Streets was "Communications and Operations Manager". What does this mean? Well the "communications" part is simple. It is my responsibility to make sure the newsletter, monthly e-newsletter, grants and grant follow up reports are taken care of. Basically, I just have to make sure Streets is communicating with its fund base in such a way that keeps everyone well informed as to what is going on down here. |
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Typical Mr. Fix-it. |
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Now for the "operations" part of this equation. It seems that when I took this job, nobody down here really knew how to be a Mr Fix-it. Every time a toilet jammed, they called the plumber. When a light bulb blew, somebody informed an electrician. About the most industrious thing anybody tried down here was vacuuming the carpet. It just wasn't a part of "who we are and what we do" here at Streets. However, as you can most likely imagine, this is not the most efficient, or cost effective, way of dealing with daily chores. So when I arrived, they went "hey, you live in a really old house that needs fixing all the time... you're our new operations guy!" Now, I've always been pretty cool with this part of my title as it gives me a break from the grant grind and allows me to feed my mechanical side. |
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| However, now that we are moving into new $4,200,000 facility, I suddenly feel dangerously unqualified to deal with the "title". Before, when something broke, I just fixed it...or at least attempted to. If for some reason I was unable to do so and really screwed something up in the process, it was no big deal. The thing I was working on wasn't working right anyway. But on the new building, we have HVAC units that cost $40,000 each. Not something I want to just climb up on the roof and start taking apart with a hammer so see what is the matter. So we will have to see how that portion of my title plays out over the next year. But back to my Amazing Achievement feature. |
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| Remember that janitor guy in high school that had the huge ring of keys on his belt? Remember how he also kept an array of strange tools in his pockets at all times? Well, that guy was no janitor... he was your school's "Operations Manager". Therefore, part B of my job description essentially makes me the Streets equivalent of "that guy", and it is my goal to, by the end of this article, have you crawling back to your high school and thanking the him for the incredible burden he carried for you every day... except of course for those 3 months in the summer, spring break, memorial day, labor day, fair day, MLK day, snow flurry day, no AC day, teacher in service days, veterans day and so on. |
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example of "that guy" - aka Schneider |
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"That guy", like me, carried around a lot of crap in his pockets every day. It was also the reason you could hear him walking down the hall from 40 yards away. The combination of keys, tools and random change he just found on the ground made a rather distinctive sound when mixed together in a Dickies pants pocket cocktail. However, it isn't until you take all this stuff out and place it on a desk that you realize just how much stuff there really is. Seriously, take a look at it all in the photo below. Medieval knights had less to put on each morning, and at least they had the help of a squire that was solely devoted to helping them out with the process. Me, I just have a stoopid little tray that I place everything on when I come home in the evenings just so that I can keep up with it all. |
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| Dood not currently on my payroll |
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| To put this into a perspective those of you whom are not members of the "operations brotherhood" can comprehend, I commandeered the postage scale from the mail room and started weighing everything attached to me. Below is a list of the inventory taken. |
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| As you can see, even without the phone (or a lot of cash on me at the time) it would cost more than $3.85 just to first class mail all this stuff to a location within the continental US. Throw in the Treo, and we are pushing the $5 dollar envelope with over 1.25 total pounds of cargo. Now 1.25 pounds may not seem like all that much on its own, but factor in that I do it over 3,000 times in a day and suddenly one can grasp how truly burdensome this operations gig is. You see, as a part of my "research" I took a pedometer and started counting the average number of steps I take in a day. Counts ranged from 2,800 to 3,400, so it isn't a stretch to say that I drag and extra two tons a day approximately a mile and a half. |
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2'6" per stride x 3,000 steps = 7,500 feet or 1.42 miles |
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To put all that another way... horsepower is defined as the ability to lift one pound, one foot in one second. Therefore, a car engine with 200 horsepower could lift 200 pounds, one foot in one second. Using this definition, along with the infallible data collected from my pedometer, my lifting of 4,000 additional pounds a day in operations manager related crap a total of 3,000 times a day translates into over 37,500 total horsepower* generated in a day. Impressive? No, it is much more than that... |
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It is an Amazing Achievement. |
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| *based off the ability to make 1 stride every .65 seconds when walking. The phrase "total horsepower" refers to cumulative output. |
- 5/4/2006 10:29:17 AM