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I was driving home from work Friday, listening to music as I often do. Most music is background noise. You don’t hear, or can’t make out, the lyrics and if you can they’re inane word salad. You sing along with no idea what the artist meant when they wrote the song and it probably doesn’t matter.
On this particular afternoon I was listening to Ben Folds. Ben is different. His songs tell stories and for better or worse his music demands that you pay attention. You’re compelled to follow the story and see where it goes. Sometimes the story is concise and there is a clear meaning. Ben falls off the stage at a concert in Japan, cuts his head, gets a concussion and goes to the hospital to get x-rays. Ben watches his little girl grow and realizes that she won’t be this little baby forever. Other songs leave you filling in the rest of the story for yourself. Listen to Brick and even though you can probably guess what it’s about you still wonder. Your mind wanders to all the potential events that might have led to this moment and where they go from here. It breaks your heart.
Anyway, the particular song that got me on this day was the irony of hearing Fred Jones, Part II. It’s a tragedy. Maybe not as much of a tragedy as Brick, but still a tragedy in it’s own way. Was Fred fired or is he simply retiring? We’re not sure but that’s not the point. The point is that Fred has worked at the paper for twenty-five years but he was replaced and forgotten long ago. A victim of progress or perhaps his own ineptitude or lack of ambition. Regardless, no one will miss Fred because they’re not aware of his existence. His position is like the stop at the train station. He gets off, another gets on. Nothing really changes though.
The irony of this was that Friday was my last meaningful day at the company I’ve worked 31 years for. I’m on vacation for some time and have a couple of days I still need to go into the office so no one took my badge or walked me out the door but for all intents I’m done.
The song got me thinking, am I like Fred or did 31 years mean something? Did I contribute to a lasting legacy or was my employment merely transactional? Did I just screw bolts into a widget in return for a paycheck that helped buy a home and support a family? It was an odd feeling, walking out of the building clutching my space heater and mechanical keyboard. Was that it?
We talk a lot at Costco about the “Costco culture”. If I were to boil what that means to me into a simple statement, it simply comes down to “do the right thing”. The problem with that is that as humans we’re terrible at doing the right thing. Often we don’t know what the right thing is, or we do know exactly what that is but it’s not easy so we do something else. Maybe we don’t necessarily do the “wrong thing”, we just don’t do the best right thing, we do something less.
When we talk about “Costco culture” we’re talking about modeling the “right thing” for others so they don’t have to think about it. It’s all they know so when the time comes to make a decision there is no choice, all we know is how to do the right thing. It’s easy to have that culture when you’ve had two CEO’s in 40 years and they beat the exact same drum. It would be much harder with a revolving door of executives, each with their own idea of “right”.
So, I was there 31 of the past 40 years. Did I leave a legacy of doing the right thing and will that be remembered. Maybe. Hopefully.
Good writeup Dan