The Want to Belong

My first job out of high school was supposed to be just a summer gig before college. I had worked as a janitor, throughout my high school summers, but had heard of concrete work through the schools assistant principal. His son, Jeff had also worked as a janitor through the summers as well, but when he graduated had made a move to concrete work. He said it paid better than the janitor type work and you got to be outside working all summer.

It sounded like a win.

The Team

The place was a small local concrete contractor; A rural Ohio town of about 6,000 people. No high-rise, safety vest, hard hat type of construction. It’s more like the wild west of construction. If you have ever seen a rowdy mismatched looking crew working on a roof in your neighborhood…we looked like them. We worked on grain bin pads, basements, driveways, sidewalks, and all sorts of little to medium sized concrete projects within about an hour driving distance.

In the summers, the crew grew to about 6–8 people, as most concrete work is weather dependent and the summers are the busy season for this type of work. There was one full-time guy; while the rest of the team were summer helpers between the ages of 18–24 filling in between starting or returning to college. And always one rotating ‘down and out’ older guy that seemed to have the same country song story — “Moved into town for some reason, lost his wife or girlfriend; just got a DUI, and it was just him and his dog.”

It Was Fun

The owner took care of bidding, stopping by sites to make sure our work was on par, would help with the more complicated stuff, but mostly let us free to do our work.

We each had a role in the process, would play our strengths, and it felt like we got a lot of work done. Besides some normal crap-talking, macho competitiveness, and one guy who you could always count on to throw a fit, we felt like a team. Even if we got on each other’s nerves through the day, we still felt like we were strong, capable, productive, and had a lot of fun during the day.

Although our dress code ended up being just leather boots, daisy duke shorts, and no shirt by the time the sun was up; that outfit and look didn’t bring team cohesion. We wanted to feel more like a team; we wanted a brand that showed us who we were. We felt like a team, but we also wanted to look like a team.

Jersey Day

Most of us had played sports at some level in high school and knew the power of the day you got jerseys. Typically you would work together through try-outs, practices, and conditioning, until one fateful day, the jersey’s would show up. The smell of vinyl and screenprinting ink would fill the locker room, and you would see an overstuff brown cardboard box sitting outside the coaches office.

It’s on that day when you slide that jersey on with your team; you feel like one. You start to feel like you got each other’s back. That you have suffered together and you have earned the right to wear the team colors.

At Work

In our summer concrete work, we wanted that same feeling. During the routine gas-station stop every morning to fill up on some cheap energy drink and beef jerky, we wanted to walk in as a team. We wanted to feel that team cohesion; we wanted to be noticed. Our current hodge-podge outfits made us look more like daily helpers than a skilled concrete crew.

We brought company T-shirts up to the owner, who thought the shirts were an unnecessary expense. He had his logo on the truck and didn’t think we needed shirts to do our work.

So a few of us designed something ourselves, went to the local screen printer and made our shirts. We got a deep blue color that matched the color of our trucks, printed the company name on the back in white letters, and ordered enough for everyone on the team.

When I put that shirt on, I felt stronger than when I stood alone. I also had higher accountability now. I was on ‘this’ team. We had our own culture, our way of doing things. And of course, we thought we were the best concrete guys ever. If another company did bigger projects than us — we said they were too big and they didn’t care enough about the work. If another company was smaller, we said they couldn’t do work as fast as us. These shirts brought us together and united us as one.

Work Now.

Working with people I like, having fun, putting out good work, and being part of a winning team has always been the intention of our business. Many people go to jobs they don’t like, or don’t want to be. Work is seen as a sentence, a necessary evil, so they can do what ‘they really want to do.’

I don’t want to live like that.

We all have a feeling to want to belong.

Sometimes it’s a simple blue shirt that can bring you together. We like to be part of a winning team; somewhere we belong.