Flower Shop Canadian

      When my grandparents, Dolly and Clark, got married in 1925, they moved from Canada to Buffalo. There were more jobs available in Buffalo at that time than in their home towns, and the pay was better too.

      And they both found jobs right away. Dolly saw a florist shop with a help wanted sign – and she went in, applied, and was hired! She told me that she liked that job very much. Dolly enjoyed almost every job she ever had.

      At the florist shop, there were just the owner and Dolly. After a few months there, the owner asked Dolly one day if she knew why he had hired her over all the other applicants for the job?

       Dolly answered with what she thought was the obvious – she had been the most qualified?

      The flower store owner chuckled and said that everyone who applied for the job was qualified! He had to find a reason to hire one of the candidates over all of the others. Something that stood out.

      “You are Canadian,” the florist said, “And my wife is Canadian. I like my wife. So I figured that I like Canadians, and that is what made you a better applicant than all of the others. I hired you because you are Canadian.”

      I guess in today's world the flower shop owner would get into trouble for vocalizing something like that. But what surprised my grandmother at the time was the admission that it was not her qualifications that got her the job, but rather some dumb luck and a guy who happened to like his Canadian wife.

      There are many life lessons you don't learn about in school, but rather you find them out as you experience them firsthand. Things that should make sense turn out to be both completely arbitrary and simply realistic. Sometimes you get a job because you are the best candidate for the position, yet more often you land a job because of who you know; and then other times it is just dumb luck that you are picked over somebody else. And that's just how it is –

      Work at the flower shop did not continue after Dolly had her first child and stayed home to take care of him. More children followed. And she soon learned that parenting too is successful sometimes if you know what you are doing, and other times it is successful because of who you know, and yet it's the times when plain dumb luck saves the day, and you wonder if you have really ever been qualified for anything at all!

98 20150409 The Flower Shop Canadian