Sunday, February 13, 2011

It's Funny Until It Happens To Me....

This past year, my wife and I bought a 6 acre piece of property in Cumming, GA, which is north of Atlanta about 20 miles or so with the anticipation of developing it into three portions:  The first acre is to be our future home with all of the fixins (yes southern draw..Written not Spoken!).

The next acre and a half is set for the greenhouses for our 2nd company, Blossom Creek Nursery.  We grow seasonal flowers for the landscapers, homeowners, and garden centers around north Atlanta, but also use them in my main company, Spartan Lawn & Landscape.

And the remainder of the property is for our horse stable, pasture and riding ring.  My wife is a competitive jumper on her off time, so we're bringing it all together in one place to make it easier on all of us.  Companies and Pleasure.  Our little retreat in the big city.

View from the Back of the Property

Anyhow, this weekend, I took two of my workers with me to install some fencing around the horse pasture while the grader was finishing up my wife's riding ring.  It's amazing to me that an individual in a bulldozer can turn raw land one day into a masterpiece of pasture land, ring, greenhouse land with the perfect flow between them all.  Kudos to Scott, big time. 

Back to the fencing.  To establish this storyline a little, I have to say that my workers are from the latin descent, needless to say, they're Mexican.  (Absolutely nothing wrong with that at all, it just helps with the irony) and I wouldn't change Efran and the clan for anyone else in the world.  They are excellent at what they do, and I only have to explain the directions once, in English.

However, every once in a while, I'll ask a detailed instruction of the guys and I'll get this happy smile from their faces and the answer "yes or ok" and that's it.  It cracks me up because in the building and landscape industry, many will say that workers who don't understand your language will simply smile and say "yes".  So, I find it funny when it happens.  It looks like a guilty child's face when they got caught.  That innocent smile with their eyes searching for an answer.  ha!

So as we were installing fence posts, I mentioned that I wanted the poles to be 55" out of the ground with fence lines at every 12" up the posts.  And what did I get, but a smile from the guys and Efran simply saying "yes".  I knew right then that I put them in la la land and lord know what would have happened to the posts if I didn't simplify my directions at that moment.  Which I did, and the day went off perfectly.

When the day ended, and I was taking them back to their car, we started laughing and talking about soccer and players in the Mexican league.  As Efran was telling his story, he added some spanish words to it and looked at me with anticipation of an answer.  I, all of a sudden, became that guilty child's face searching for an answer with nervousness building up around my eyes.  But in the end, all that came out was...A friendly smile and the word "Yes"...... Who's the fool now.  Time to work on my Spanish.

Hasta manana my friends, hasta manana!

Mr. Spartan

4 comments:

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