The following is a true story.
When I was in 5th grade, my mother decided the public school I was attending at the time was failing her four children.
My parents eventually pulled us out and moved all of us across town to a private Catholic school, which they felt was a better fit from an educational standpoint.
The only problem was that the school was a good 30-minute drive from our house in southern Orange County. Coupled with a 7:30 am start time, this would represent a severe shift in the morning wake up times for the entire family.
We all eventually settled in and learned to adapt to not only the commute both ways, but the more rigorous course load as well.
What we as kids struggled with the most, however, were the mornings.
With my father traveling quite often on business, usually weeks at a time, my mother had no choice but to put us all to work bigtime.
Every morning, before our 30-minute commute across town to school, each of the Achak children had the following chores to complete:
- Bring respective dirty clothes hamper to downstairs laundry room and start the washer/dryer
- Rake and pickup all leaves in front, side and back yard areas
- Sweep front driveway and back deck
- Clean predetermined bathrooms, including toilets
- Vacuum a portion of the house (upstairs and down)
- Make lunch
- Do all the dishes
- Rake the shag carpeting in the downstairs living and dining areas until it stood on end
It’s no wonder we were glad to leave home and head to school finally. Frankly, I’m surprised we put up with it as long as we did, and there were stories around the neighborhood of our friends’ parents threatening to send their kids to our house if they didn’t behave.
It’s also no surprise why I couldn’t wait to head off to college.
Sometimes I get asked me where my “type A-ness” comes from or my relentless obsession with being early to everything. It’s really not that hard to figure it out.
I’d like to think that a bit of my work DNA is has seeped into FCR. Failure was never going to be an option for me (or for John). I felt that since I could not be smarter than everyone in our industry, the next best thing would be to outwork everyone.
That philosophy has always served me well.
Matthew Achak
Matthew Achak is president and cofounder of FCR, a TTEC company. His role within FCR involves actively managing all company-wide sales, marketing, business development, social media, public relations, client-facing communications, and ongoing program growth. Founded in 2005 in Roseburg, OR , FCR provides innovative support to innovative companies.