Labor Day Thanks (2022)

Hey team, all right, so here we are, Monday Message. It is September 5th, 2022, and today is Labor Day. Yep, today’s Labor Day. I know it’s the first part of September. Summer’s about to end. Historically in these last number of years (I mean, as long as I’ve been alive), for the most part, Labor Day is about parties. It’s about having the day off, maybe a federal holiday. It’s time for that one last final barbecue before the leaves fall. It gets too cold and wet and rainy to really party outside. So, we go down to the beach or go down to the river, or we go out in the backyard, and we barbecue some steaks or burgers and hot dogs, and sit around the campfire and have one last hurrah before we get ready for winter.

The historicness of Labor Day and what it’s really about is the fact that we celebrate the labor of the hard-working men and women of our country.

And I think that’s a good thing to celebrate. You at Northwest Enforcement. For all of your hard work, for your values, for displaying to our clients and community your core values that are our core values. Being valuable because nothing less will do. Being humble. Not too proud to pick up trash. Being invested. Owning it. Being transparent even at a cost. Resolve, improvise, adapt, and overcome. And of course, we eat cake because we celebrate like a thing.

And if you think back, some of you may or may not know this. I didn’t know this until I looked it up and studied it. Labor Day became a national holiday in 1894. Before then, it was kind of the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, so the average person worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day. As a matter of fact, 5, 6, 7, 8-year-old kids would be working. Yeah, boys that are my son’s ages were working in factories. People worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day to make ends meet. To make ends meet, that’s right.

And today, many of us now, we have vacations and so on and so forth. We have grown from not working quite so hard, not so long of hours, and we’ve automated a number of things. If you think back to Henry Ford and the fact that he wanted to pay his workers enough money so that they could afford one of the automobiles they were making in the factories in the early 1900s. That was a huge thing. That was a different way of thinking back then because for the average person, work was really all they had to look forward to. And so, it was a different time.

So today on Labor Day, if you’re not working, and if you are working, let me shout out and say thank you. One, you’re getting paid time and a half, so congratulations, you’re making a little extra cash. I know some of you volunteered to do this because you like the money. Others of you, you had to be talked into it or just told that, hey, to meet the client’s needs, we’ve got to do this.

Thank you for sacrificing your maybe last BBQ on this day for the success and investment that you have in the company and the people that you serve with and the people we serve—our clients, our community.

So thank you for that. But on this day, if you are off and you’re having that barbecue, you’re down by the river, thank you for all the hard work you’ve done all summer and throughout this year. And as we continue to march forward the rest of this year into 2023, next year, I just want to say thank you for the dedication and the service that you continue to give.

We appreciate all that you have done and all that you continue to do. So thank you for that.

All right, guys, I hope that you’re enjoying that watermelon, the corn. I know my son David is going to enjoy another piece of corn today because he loves corn. He probably will have two. And if we don’t pay attention, he’ll probably eat three pieces of corn today because he loves corn. And we’re going to enjoy maybe some burgers, some dogs, or steak, I don’t know. I’ve got something on the smoker, I’m sure.

So, God bless you guys, and thank you so much for your hard work. Enjoy this Labor Day, and I hope the little history about Labor Day was important. Maybe it’ll spur you to go and look into why we celebrate some of the holidays we celebrate and why we do them. It’s kind of important to take account of the history of what we do. As I’m sitting here on my beautiful deck and thinking about you and looking at all the birds and hearing the squirrels in the background and all that. It’s kind of nice to get up early in the morning and think about all those things. And again, my heart is turned towards you. So, I want to say thank you for the value that you continue to bring to our team.

All right, God bless you guys. Enjoy the rest of your day, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye, see ya.