Nice Job

I hear this all the time from the parent’s of my neighborhood kids and wonder? “Nice job?” What did the kid do to warrant such a positive rewarding statement?

Pick up your toys. Nice Job! Eat all your carrots. Nice Job! You made a poopie. Nice Job!

I’m no child psychologist and I fully understand us kids need to know right from wrong, good from bad, but “Nice Job”?

A job, from what I understand, is a person performing a task or reaching a goal for monetary compensation. I’m not sure making a poopie accomplishes that definition but the tooth fairy gives you money for losing teeth.

Now we all like compliments and it is a good training tool for reinforcement of a positive reaction.

Since we were first in school we got certificates for ‘best attendance’ or ‘excellent penmanship’ or ‘plays well with others’. Report cards are suppose to motivate our youth, but no so much for me.

After getting ‘for real’ employment, filling out an application, sitting politely through an intensive grilling or interview with lots of scribbling and hush remarks about your attire and you want to have a make over for the first answers, then a long wait for an approval or rejection notice and finally a photo ID, security clearance and a medical and criminal check-up you finally have a job. After a pile of HR papers with rules and regulations and possible benefits, you are assigned a spot and an overseer and start to find the techniques to perform your task with the skills you brought with you and look for the bathroom and when the breaks are scheduled. Getting along with your co-workers is important for all are also vying for a position on the corporate ladder like a team of star players seeking that corner office.

Along the work career you accomplish goals and are rewarded with certificates of excellence and hopefully an increase in monetary rewards for your drudgery of making a company healthy and wealthy and bosses and their bosses and their bosses stock holders and engulfed in their annual reports and their extended vacations in the Hamptons.

Yet somewhere along the way your immediate supervisor stops saying, “Nice Job” or “Well done” or even a pat on the back (side). High fives become competition and the ones with the most medals on their chest or plaques on the wall get new titles demanding respect.

Don’t fret dear friends, as we get older and no wiser, but less mobile and even feeble we can hear those wonderful words again.

“You made a poopie, nice job!”