Occasionally I hear people call the homeless "lazy." Let me tell you a story about that.
The tile floors looked grimy, gritty and dirty at the Center. Everyone wanted them cleaned and refinished. But that’s impossible to do during the week unless we worked all night or closed for a day or two. The best bet seemed to be to do the stripping, cleaning, neutralizing, sealing and finishing over New Year’s weekend, since the Center was closed Saturday, Sunday and Monday anyway.
The first task, to be accomplished on Friday night, was to move everything out of the way. All tables, chairs, file cabinets and more had to be packed into small rooms to keep the main floors open. I decided to start the work at 2:30 PM Friday. Since we close at 4:00, I thought maybe I’d get a handful of homeless volunteers to take a couple hours to lug all the furniture away. When I announced the plan, 28 people immediately pitched in to help! The work got done, not in 2 hours but in 25 minutes.
Earlier I had asked for volunteers for work crews on weekend mornings. I hoped for two or three and got six eager workers taking pride in performing a good job at their Center.
These men wanted to work. They have valuable work experience and wanted to show their skills. They did. The place looks terrific.
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