What’s one lesson you’ve learned from failure in your career?
This is going to sound crazy, but it would be not knowing how to eat a bowl of soup correctly!
In 1986 I was twenty-nine years old and got my first Golf Course Superintendent job at a ‘Blue Blood’ club in Baltimore.
I didn’t know much about or care about the ‘Blue Blood’ part, all I knew was that my ‘Peasant’ self’s blood ran red.
Soon after being hired, I was asked to come to my first golf committee meeting upstairs at the old wooden mansion of a clubhouse at The Elkridge Club. It was bad enough picking out clothes with my wife for this function and little did I know what I was about to walk into.
The clubhouse employees, all dressed in black with ties, escorted me to a room upstairs where I found a nightmare forming right in front of me. The long table had white linens and FULL place settings. I started to worry and sweat in my sport coat and tie. As I have stated in past blogs,
I grew up on a one lane dirt road in a basic double wide. We had Tupperware cups and plastic plates at meals. The good dishes were for holidays!
At the last minute, the golf committee chairman had decided since the meeting might be long, that the committee’s budget would pay for dinner if anyone wanted some.
I was fortunate that the ladies ordered first as there were no menus, and I was thinking tomato soup and grilled cheese. I thought my choice for dinner would make it easy for me to eat it, but I was soon having difficulty and was afraid to make a spectacle of myself.
I ended up eating very little of my chicken dinner with cream-of-crab soup. They were very fancy looking with many a topping, not barbeque sauce or salt and pepper.
So ultimately, I failed at eating my first meal with the golf committee. I wasn’t prepared but ultimately because I had no clue dinner would be involved. I quickly got an etiquette book and learned about proper eating and many other things about dining, business, and networking.
Over the years I have been on many committees and in many organizations. If needed, I always ask these organizations to have classes or at least one meeting for Assistants and Supers who want to attend about proper Etiquette. No one has ever taken me up on these important aspects of anyone’s job, and life!
I also believe I have never seen one offered by the GCSAA. (Someone correct me if I am wrong.) If you want to get ahead, learn proper etiquette, and how to communicate. A very valuable lesson!
-Mark S. Merrick, CGCS Retired
Introducing ‘Merrick Mondays’, a segment where we hear from Mark Merrick, our resident brand Ambassador, Chief ‘Cool” Officer, and general source of wisdom and secrets of the universe, to spotlight a dose of interview-style content, weekly.