Painting the prayer room
Feb. 24th, 2013 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusMike's a new guy, helping me paint the prayer room. I mentioned to John that he knows how to do maintenance.
John: "Oooh, boy, don't let that get out...."
Yep, we have a lot of maintenance issues. And Mike's nice enough that I can see him run ragged before he has his own spiritual practice habits together. We all can. He admits that it happened when he was on retreat in New York. The main maintenance person assumed he was paying for the retreat through a kind of work-payment arrangement, because he willingly did so much. She mistakenly made use of him like he was an employee. It pulled him off of a lot of the retreat. :(
Ani Dorje, who recognized a fellow "work yourself into the ground" person, has run interference for him. Between Ani Dorje, John, and myself, we're hiding the fact that he does maintenance.
In the painting project, he offered to caulk some cracks in the join between the walls and ceiling. We're not on a tight time frame, I'm moving slowly, deliberately, cautiously. But because of his job, his schedule got jammed up, and Ani Dorje found him caulking at 11pm (during his prayer shift, which is a no-no, but he's new) -- and it turned out he had to be at work at 4am the next morning.
Aw, crap.
Conscientiousness is one thing but if he hadn't done the caulk then we would've just painted a different wall, no big deal. The prayer vigil is the priority.
She took the prayer shift and sent him home to get some sleep. And asked me to help her look out for him.
Then he offered to bring all sorts of tools and supplies for the project. Oh! Much to learn. "No, no, no," I told him. "Bring them, but keep any tools in your trunk -- unless you're willing to have them disappear."
I explained this was a temple with a couple hundred people and a lot of work being done. Folks will see a tool they need, think it belongs to the temple, use it, and not put it back where they found it (heck, it might not even be the same person returning it). Poof! Bye-bye paintbrush-ladder-dropcloth-hammer-mallet-five-in-one-tool-screwdriver. People have lost hundreds of dollars worth of tools before they've figured it out.
Namely: Ani Dorje has. Ted's lost, oh man, I'm not even sure how much. Over a grand, I'm sure, because his were expensive power tools. (Now you have to sign a contract in blood to borrow a palm sander from Ted.)
I explained, "If you have a project, your trunk becomes your rolling toolbox."
He'll get up to speed. And hopefully, with friends looking out for him, not the hard way, like we did. :D
John: "Oooh, boy, don't let that get out...."
Yep, we have a lot of maintenance issues. And Mike's nice enough that I can see him run ragged before he has his own spiritual practice habits together. We all can. He admits that it happened when he was on retreat in New York. The main maintenance person assumed he was paying for the retreat through a kind of work-payment arrangement, because he willingly did so much. She mistakenly made use of him like he was an employee. It pulled him off of a lot of the retreat. :(
Ani Dorje, who recognized a fellow "work yourself into the ground" person, has run interference for him. Between Ani Dorje, John, and myself, we're hiding the fact that he does maintenance.
In the painting project, he offered to caulk some cracks in the join between the walls and ceiling. We're not on a tight time frame, I'm moving slowly, deliberately, cautiously. But because of his job, his schedule got jammed up, and Ani Dorje found him caulking at 11pm (during his prayer shift, which is a no-no, but he's new) -- and it turned out he had to be at work at 4am the next morning.
Aw, crap.
Conscientiousness is one thing but if he hadn't done the caulk then we would've just painted a different wall, no big deal. The prayer vigil is the priority.
She took the prayer shift and sent him home to get some sleep. And asked me to help her look out for him.
Then he offered to bring all sorts of tools and supplies for the project. Oh! Much to learn. "No, no, no," I told him. "Bring them, but keep any tools in your trunk -- unless you're willing to have them disappear."
I explained this was a temple with a couple hundred people and a lot of work being done. Folks will see a tool they need, think it belongs to the temple, use it, and not put it back where they found it (heck, it might not even be the same person returning it). Poof! Bye-bye paintbrush-ladder-dropcloth-hammer-mallet-five-in-one-tool-screwdriver. People have lost hundreds of dollars worth of tools before they've figured it out.
Namely: Ani Dorje has. Ted's lost, oh man, I'm not even sure how much. Over a grand, I'm sure, because his were expensive power tools. (Now you have to sign a contract in blood to borrow a palm sander from Ted.)
I explained, "If you have a project, your trunk becomes your rolling toolbox."
He'll get up to speed. And hopefully, with friends looking out for him, not the hard way, like we did. :D
