Sue and I left the next day to meet Charles and take him and the family out to dinner. We were excited like kids driving up there and worried all the way that Charles wouldn’t take the job. We knew this was our chance to make a difference in one family’s life but more importantly, we could help restore the dignity in Charles that all of these returning vets deserve.
We have hired hundreds of people over the course of our professional lives, but we have never had the opportunity to make this kind of impact, or maybe it was just the first time that we had seen the plight of someone unemployed portrayed so vividly. Maybe it’s just that we have matured to a point where we would like to stop thinking of ourselves so much and need to help some people. I think I’m going to stop wasting time trying to figure out our motivation and just do it!
I love that movie “Dave” with Kevin Kline where he owns a Temp Company that gets jobs for folks. His great line is: “It’s Monday and everyone works on Monday”. Well hopefully, we can try to make it Monday for a lot of these returning vets no matter their skill sets or challenges that they may have.
Anyway the drive up was mixed with both anticipation and nerves as we hoped we could live up to our expectations. Could we be the people we so wanted to be? Could we really get a guy like Charles to work with our family?