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When I was a young man no one could tell me anything. I new it all! At least I thought I knew it all and wouldn’t be told anything by anybody. The recipe was and for many young people today is a recipe for disaster. I was lucky. One man decided to take up his own personal challenge and teach me something. No matter how hard I pushed he pushed back just as hard. He wouldn’t let me give up on myself even when I wanted to.
John Duchesne was my boss when I was a teenager fresh out of school. Well, not that fresh. I left school a year before graduation because ‘I thought I knew everything.’ Who needs an education? After a myriad of degrading jobs it turned out that I needed an education. Unfortunately I had burned my bridges behind me and there was no going back. As luck would have it my salvation was just around the corner.
John managed a small builder’s merchant and was looking for someone to work in the warehouse and lumber yard. It seemed like just another bad job on a treadmill of bad jobs. The work was hard most days and the rewards seemed few at the time. Looking back however I can see that I was slowly being trained in all aspects of the business. I was already pretty handy with tools and my experience grew as John taught me the trade. He was a master craftsman and his woodworking skills were second to none. I learned how to estimate any type of job, learned about the materials and products we sold, learned to drive a forklift truck, learned about book keeping, daily cash reports, bank deposits, stock control, ordering, and eventually became the assistant manager. I have always been keen to learn and John continued to feed me with knowledge while always keeping me in line when I tried to push a bit too hard.
I can honestly say that without John I would have had a tougher time in my early work life. John left that job a couple years later. I too moved on and our paths crossed again when we both worked for a larger builder’s merchant. He stayed on there until he retired and I moved on to bigger and better things several thousand miles away. It was many years later when I was mature enough to realise what he had done for me. I decided to look him up while on a business trip. I found him working hard and except for more grey hair he was the same man I remembered. I thanked him for everything he did for me. We had a coffee and a catch up before he got back to work and I too had to do the same.
I never saw John again and heard that he passed away a few years later. Not a day goes by that I don’t use something John taught me. Whether its business or trade related he lives on in me and my work. I hope I can return the favour and pass on my knowledge someday too.
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