Score Keepers

I like competition. If anyone is about keeping score it’s me.

But keeping score in the workplace is dangerous. As a supervisor or boss we have to. But it is especially disheartening when we keep score of our peers. We all know how people keep score – they count our hours working, they keep score of how they perceive we deal with quality, and they even count the good and bad in our budget. The score keeping list goes on and on.

Often in the Y’s workplace you hear those qualifying statements, “Did you know that such in such is…………” or “Did you see that such in such was not doing ……”

Even when they are correct in their observation and there are mistakes and problems, I always want to ask, “Do you supervise them? How do you have time to do your job and watch everyone else?”

In one of my devotions this week I read the parable about the landowner in the vineyard who paid the laborers all the same whether they worked all day or a partial day. Many of the people who worked all day complained. I was struck by the line in my devo when the author posed, “What if one of the laborers thanked the landowner for his generosity? Are we grateful for the work and wage that is promised us or are we more concerned that others are getting more than they deserve?”

Thoughts

-         - When we grumble and complain about others we lose focus on our work and how we are serving God and his mission.

-         - When we compare and judge we completely ignore and misunderstand God’s grace. (the entire Kingdom is built on God’s Grace!)

-         - When we assume too much about fairness, we ignore the blessings in what we DO have

Maybe today we can practice being a little more thankful and a little less judgmental.