An early peek into purposeful work

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It was June 1999. I was 17, going on 18 in a few weeks, and it was time to get my first job.

Competitive sports and training took up so much of my time in my teenage years that my parents had always let me off the hook from getting a job. But their grace period had now come to an end. I would be heading off to prep school in New Hampshire in the fall, and I needed to earn some spending money.

Wax on, wax off

I remember my mom pointing out a help-wanted ad in the newspaper for a manual car wash. You remember those, right? We used to drive into a large bay, where a bunch of humans were waiting to wash our car with their hands. Archaic, right?

They were looking for car washers.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll give it a try.” I was an easy-going kid.

I also remember my mom pulling up in the car to pick me up after my first shift. I can still see the look on her face. She was doing her best not to burst out laughing. She could see the exhaustion in my eyes.

It had been a horrible day.

Not horrible because I was mistreated or because I had a poor work ethic or a bad attitude.

Horrible because of the monotony. It was a level of monotony that was the opposite of meaningful to me.

There were typically three or four people washing a car at the same time: a sprayer, a washer, a waxer and a dryer. For eight hours, one car after another pulled into the bay and I repeated the same exact motion. Over, and over… and over again. For someone like me – a person who likes a lot of action, creativity and freedom – it was completely exhausting.

My first official day of employment painted a very depressing picture of work for me.

“Not a great day?” my mom asked through a sly grin as I got into the car, her tone drenched in sarcasm. “OK, OK, OK, come back tomorrow and try it again before you quit.”

The next day she picked me up again and saw the same defeated look on my face.

“All right,” she said, “If you want to quit, you need to find another job, pronto.”

I instinctively knew where I was going to go.

Purpose on the horizon

The next day, my mom drove me to Les Descentes sur le St. Laurent – a company offering rafting tours through the rapids in Lachine, just outside of Montreal. I met the owner and I told him – with conviction – that I wanted to be a rafting guide.

I can’t explain it, really. It’s not like I ever sat down and wrote out a list of jobs I could possibly get and their respective pros and cons. I had simply driven by the rapids, seen people rafting, and thought, that looks awesome.

It felt more like the job picked me than I picked the job.

Being a rafting guide appealed to me instinctively: I love being outside, I love being physically active and I love interacting with new people. On top of that, I need a bit of risk in my life or I get bored, fast.

Check, check, check, check.

The owner told me that every prospective guide had to complete 20 (unpaid) training runs before they could take the test and get hired. He said I could start doing the training runs the next day and then take the test once I turned 18 in a few weeks.

That next morning, I hopped on my old mountain bike at 6 a.m. and pedalled the 25 kilometres to Lachine to start my first day of training.

A summer of meaning making

I made that commute to and from Lachine by bike five or six days a week for the following two summers. Ten-hour days guiding tourists through the rapids in the sweltering heat or chilling rain, sandwiched between hour-long bike rides.

I can’t tell you how many times I fell asleep eating dinner on the couch those summers.

Now, objectively, the rafting job was way, way harder than the car wash. It required social intelligence, cultural awareness, public speaking, physical strength, pattern recognition, adaptability, critical thinking, creativity, physical and mental endurance, and bilingual fluency.

The car wash required moving my arm in a circular motion on repeat for eight hours.
Not only that, but the rafting pay was abysmal. I made a lower hourly wage than at the car wash. It bordered on unethical.

I didn’t care.

I felt alive – inspired, motivated, challenged and so happy to be outside all day and physically active in a meaningful way.

As challenging as it was, I absolutely loved it.

I had closed the door on the car wash and opened the door to rafting… and to a summer job filled with meaning and purpose.

I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have had this early opportunity to see how vastly different the experience of working could be.

What is your version of rafting?

My job as a rafting guide taught me that it’s possible to get paid to do something that you love, even if you don’t make the NHL. The contrast between the car wash and the rafting job helped me understand that working hard at something you hate is exhausting, and working hard at something you love is uplifting.

To find something we love, we need to be willing to close some doors and open new ones.

How about you? Are you washing cars or rafting?

Does your job or career feel like an exhausting grind, or a fulfilling challenge that requires strengths and skills that are meaningful to you?

Perhaps even more importantly, are you guiding the young people in your life toward the car wash, or the rapids?

One of my greatest hopes for young people starting out in the world of work is that they find their rafting job. These early experiences of purpose and meaning can turn into powerful memories that can help us navigate difficult career decisions in rocky waters over the years.

These early experiences of purpose stay with us. Once you’ve felt the rapids, it’s hard to go back to the car wash.