Michael J. Miller, Ph.D.

Construction Crew Mascot

A young family moved into a house next door to a vacant lot. One day a construction crew turned up to start building a house on the empty lot. The young family's 6-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door and started talking with the workers. She hung around and eventually the construction crew, gems-in-the-rough all of them, more or less adopted her as a kind of project mascot. They chatted with her, let her sit with them while they had coffee and lunch breaks, and gave her little jobs to do here and there to make her feel important.

At the end of the first week they even presented her with a pay envelope containing a dollar. The little girl took this home to her mother who said all the appropriate words of admiration and suggested that they take the dollar pay she had received to the bank the next day to start a savings account.

When they got to the bank the teller was equally impressed with the story and asked the little girl how she had come by her very own pay check at such a young age. The little girl proudly replied,

"I've been working with a crew building a house all week."

"My goodness gracious," said the teller, "and will you be working on the house again this week too?"

She replied, "I will if those useless sons of bitches at the lumber yard ever bring us any drywall that's worth a crap."