David has been involved with Habitat for Humanity since we moved to Marble Falls, and these days he’s the president of the local chapter. This involves getting permits from the towns where the homes are to be built, taking bids and hiring plumbers, electricians, and roofers. Before he took over, the accounting had been poorly handled, so he’s taken on a few people to help with the finances, and things are now on the right track.
David’s not in this alone, though. All the crew chips in by picking up supplies, managing the site, directing the labor, and meeting the contractors and installers. They’re all team players and seeing the way they work so well together has been a joy.
One of the tasks that’s fallen only to David since he began this involvement almost ten years ago is providing lunches on their two workdays a week. This is the most thankless and difficult responsibility there is.
“How did you end up being the one who has to hunt down the lunches?” I ask.
“Nobody else wants to do it,” he tells me. Typical David.
Several of the local restaurants, like Subway, Chic Filet, and Pizza Hut have been good enough to occasionally donate lunches. Mostly though, the food’s provided by volunteers who bring sandwiches and chips. When my name came up in the rotation, I was happy enough to make tuna sandwiches. But when David came in at the end of his day, he informed me that one of his workers didn’t eat his sandwich because he had a “sensitivity” to pickles, and that the next time I made tuna it would be appreciated if I made one without pickles. This seemed audacious to me in that, yes, they’re volunteers, and they certainly earn their lunch, but I, too, was volunteering and I didn’t think I should be required to construct each sandwich according to the different needs of each individual.
In the case of the pickle “sensitivity,” the next time I made sandwiches I did as requested; however, though I marked it clearly as his, someone else got to it before he did, so once more, no sandwich for him. Also on that day, David brought home a complaint about the type of bread I’d used. Apparently one of the guys prefers the brand with an abundance of wholesome seeds and grains and the picture of the macho baker on the packaging. In other words, the most expensive bread on the shelf. And another worker said he didn’t like sandwiches filled with salad—not tuna, not egg, not chicken.
So, pretending to care about all these special preferences, next time it was my turn to furnish the lunch, I made roast beef sandwiches using the costly bread, only to have David tell me later that one of the men had an aversion to red meat.
That was it. Never again. There had been a time when I thought that, as sandwiches are a simple food, it’d be impossible to mess them up, but it was obvious that I would never get it right. By this time so vexed was David that he actually considered making a list of preferences to give to the lunch makers. Thankfully his sense caught up with him before he went down that rabbit hole.
In a way, this reminds me of years ago when I volunteered at a downtown soup kitchen in Houston. It fell to me to be the traffic cop for the food line, where I was instructed to allow five through at a time—and I was surprised to hear grumbling about what was being served, which was usually chicken in some form.
“Chicken again?” “Pasta? Yuck.” “I hate green beans.” “The gravy looks like barf.”
To gripe about a free meal shows an arrogance so profoundly incongruous that I simply could not comprehend it. This lunch for the homeless was graciously prepared and graciously served by volunteers; but there was no grace to be found in the meal’s consumption.
While providing food for the homeless isn’t the same as providing it for the Habitat crew, it kind of is in that people are complaining about a meal that’s being prepared and offered in the spirit of kindness. It’s a sad truth that, in a lifetime full of meals, every morsel isn’t going to be delectable and wondrous. It’s just sandwiches, guys. Eat whatever’s on offer and then finish out your day.
A great group of hard workers!
