can remember the first time they pushed me out on my own, and said, “Mike, here’s the blueprints, go out here and do this job.” I was real nervous. I said, “I can’t do it,” and my boss said, “There’s a time for everything and now you go and do it. Now here’s these drawings. Don’t get scared because the drawings are thick.” He said, “You’re going to do it one page at a time. All you got to do is look at it.” So I took my job home and dreamed my job — woke up thinking about the job, what I’m going to do next, how I’m going to do this. Now it comes naturally.

I learn from my mistakes. When you learn from your own mistakes, then you listen and pick up on other people’s mistakes. If you just listen, the job will go right. Now it’s real easy — the people I work around, the way I was trained — it’s just a beautiful thing.

I love my job.

Once I get to working, into what I’m doing, it’s just fun doing it. I don’t worry about what time it is. I want to go in there and do it right. I guess it’s just a feeling, something on the inside. I work 100% because it’s in me. I was raised that way, to treat people the way that you want to be treated. It’s part of my own inner-self to want to have it the right way. You do it right, or you don’t do it at all.

And it’s not just a one-person thing. It all works together. When you know you’re part of something, you’re somebody. That’s the kind of feeling work gives me. And then I can go back and look at the work I’ve done and say, “Look, I did that and it looks real good.” It makes you proud. You get it to where you want it, to where it gives you that feeling.

I’m happy, the customer is happy, everybody’s happy.

Stories from the Field