When is a task too small? Never!

Sometimes a client will ask me to do something, and then he’ll say “I know it’s not much,” or “it’s really boring stuff to do – I’m sorry.”  And my reply is “no problem.”  Because really, it’s not.

Over the course of years I’ve been working, I’ve always been amazed when I come across people who have a list of what they will and will not do at a job.  I’m not talking about what they can and cannot do.  If you ask me to do sales calls, I’ll tell you no – not because I won’t do it, but because I can’t – I’m horrible at it and you’d be better off burning your money than paying me to do it.  I’m talking about people who refuse to do work because they feel it is beneath them in some way.

Once I was working on several projects with my manager.  One project was tied to reams of legal paperwork.  I was busy with something else at the time, so my manager gave a task to a co-worker to do for this legal project.  She needed stacks of documents three-hole punched, put into binders and divided appropriately based upon document numbering.  Now, I’ll admit, it wasn’t the most exciting job in the world to do, but it was critically important to the project because these binders were needed by the legal department to proceed with their filings and such.

A day or so into it, this co-worker stopped by my desk and began to complain about what an awful task it was, and she shouldn’t be doing it because she had a Masters degree.  I let her rant, and let her walk away.  The next week my manager came up to me and asked if I would work on the binders.  The co-worker had set in the paperwork backward, upside-down, and labeled everything incorrectly.  (She no longer had a job as of that week.)

Whatever the job you do, shouldn’t you do it well?  Isn’t it a reflection of your work ethic and the type of person you are?  Who cares if you have fifteen degrees and speak 24 languages?  If your boss asks you to make a copy – make a copy…highlight those documents…refill the toner!  My husband and I laugh sometimes because we believe that if someone paid us $100/hr to staple paper together, we wouldn’t be complaining! Everything is important to getting the job done.  Data entry, research, management, printing, emails, invoices…bringing in the occasional box of doughnuts!

Bring me your boring, dull, have-to-get done tasks and I’ll do them with a smile!

“If you are called to be a street sweeper, sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.