Your Character Is Showing

Whether you are working for a living, going to school, or raising your kids, whatever you do, please take pride in it. Don’t do anything half-assed. Excuse the language, but that’s the only phrase that will best describe what I am talking about. Your work ethic says a lot about your character.  

 Last Friday at work one of my coworkers displayed very bad work ethic. Instead of making sure he had all of his work done, he was more focused on rushing through his work day so he could start his weekend plans. As a result, his carelessness made me end up being behind on my work.

Here’s what happened. This particular coworker is our courier/driver. His duties are to drop off and deliver mail and run errands for the Administrator, which could include getting her dry-cleaning and lunch. Well, he usually delivers the mail to our office around 11 o’clock. But Wednesday and Friday he was late. He didn’t bring the mail until 4 o’clock. Mind you our office close at 4:30. It takes about an hour or more to process the mail depending on how much mail there is. But that’s not what made me upset. In the type of work we do, we get really busy sometimes so I can understand that maybe he just forgot to bring me the mail. What made me upset is that I asked him for the mail around 3:30 which would have given me enough time to process it. By the time he pulled away from is irrelevant conversation with another coworker, it wasn’t until 4 o’clock that he brought me the mail. Leaving be less than 30 min to process it. I was so upset that I was shaking. I was going to confront him about but God intervened, cause he knew I would have went completely off on this guy. It wasn’t until writing this blog post that I realized that God was teaching me a lesson about good work ethic and humility.

In the Bible Zechariah 4:10 says, “Do not despise small beginnings…” If you google the back story on the most successful people, you’ll find that not one of them gained success over night. They started from the bottom and diligently worked their way up. It was the pride that they took in working the small seemingly insignificant jobs that humbled them and also prepared them for where they are now. The courier/driver guy I’m writing about is college educated. His job only pays about $10 an hour if that much so needless to say, he probably feels like this job is beneath him. But that’s no excuse for him not to take pride in his work. His lack of good work ethic says that he is selfish, inconsiderate, and untrustworthy. His lack of respect for other people’s time show that he is selfish and inconsiderate. The fact that he doesn’t take pride in his work means he is untrustworthy. If you can’t be trusted to do small jobs, how do you expect people to trust you to be responsible for bigger more serious task?




I would love to hear some feedback on this. Do you think a person’s work ethic is connected to their overall character as a person? If yes how so?