The Forklift Driver

He happened to be walking past, so I asked him where it was. He stopped with a big smile and, rather than vaguely pointing toward some distant aisle, said, “Oh, that’ll be over here,” and started walking.

So I followed him.

When we got there, he didn’t just show me the drink.

“I’ve tried this one, but have you tried that one? I think that one’s better.”

Naturally, I bought the one Vincent recommended.

He told me what he liked about it, what he thought of the other one, and somehow the conversation just kept going.

There was no sense that he needed to get away from me or get back to something more important. He was friendly, interested and completely unhurried.

By this point we’d gone well past the normal customer-and-Costco-employee exchange.

So I asked him:

“What time did you get to work this morning, Vincent?”

I have no idea why I asked.

It just seemed like a question he might enjoy answering.

“Two o’clock.”

He said it happily.

Almost proudly.

I looked at the time.

It was about 10:30 in the morning.

He had already been working for more than eight hours.

Little did I know that this fairly random question was about to get me a truncated thirty-year version of Vincent’s life.

Which, as it turned out, I thoroughly enjoyed.

Vincent told me he’d been at Costco for around thirty years, much of that time driving forklifts.

Then, with the expression of someone about to tell you something he was quite pleased with, he said:

“Guess how much I’ve got in my 401(k).”

I laughed.

“Go on.”

“A million dollars.”

I gave him a high five.

“Mate. That’s fantastic.”

And he looked delighted.

Not smug.

Delighted.

For much of his working life, his retirement contributions had been matched dollar for dollar. Vincent kept putting the money in. His employer kept putting money in. And the years kept passing.

Thirty years is an awfully long time for compound growth to quietly get on with its business.

Now he has around a million dollars in his 401(k).

He told me about his truck, which he reckons is worth about $160,000.

He told me that he gets something like two and a half months off each year.

He told me that when he retires, his union benefit will pay him around $1,600 a month.

Later there will be Social Security.

And in a couple of years, Vincent plans to move to Mexico.

I said, “You’ll live like a king.”

He smiled.

I suspect he knows.

Then he started telling me about his children.

They want the cars. They want the shiny things. They want the things he now has.

But, in Vincent’s estimation at least, they haven’t quite inherited the bit that produced them.

The work ethic.

One of his sons is particularly bright. Vincent was clearly proud of him. But there was also that slight frustration of a father who understands something his son perhaps hasn’t fully discovered yet.

Being clever and becoming responsible for yourself are not the same thing.

Vincent had not been given much choice in the matter.

From what I understood, he came to America at around fifteen and had to help support himself and his mother.

He didn’t tell me enough for me to know the full family story, and I didn’t ask.

But necessity appears to have arrived fairly early in Vincent’s life.

Work was not an abstract virtue.

It was what you did.

You got up.

You went to work.

You looked after yourself.

You looked after the people who depended on you.

And you carried on.

That part of our conversation stayed with me for another reason.

Vincent was the third parent I’d spoken to in as many days who had said something similar about their children.

Different families. Different circumstances.

But each, in one way or another, was wrestling with the same thing.

Their children were quite comfortable remaining children.

Not children in age, obviously.

Children in the older meaning of the word.

Looked after.

Provided for.

Protected from having to take full responsibility for themselves.

And the parents weren’t all responding to it in the same way.

One didn’t seem especially bothered.

Another could see real value in pushing them gently out of the nest.

Not:

There’s the door. Good luck.

More:

Give it a go.

Stand on your own feet.

Build something for yourself.

And if you stumble, we’re still here.

That seems quite different to abandonment.

It is almost the opposite.

It is support without removing the necessity of becoming capable.

And perhaps that is one of the strange problems created by succeeding as a parent.

You work hard because you don’t want your children to struggle as you did.

Then, if things go particularly well, you can remove so much struggle that you also remove some of the conditions that taught you how to stand on your own.

There is an old idea about generations.

One starts with nothing.

The next builds something.

And eventually a later generation, having inherited the comfort without experiencing what produced it, begins to lose it again.

But I don’t think that’s quite what I was looking at here.

There is no empire.

No family fortune being squandered.

No grand rise and fall.

Just something smaller and probably more common.

A man who had to become responsible for himself very young has raised children who haven’t had to.

And now he is looking at them from the other side of thirty years of work and wondering how you teach something that life once taught you automatically.

I thought about Vincent after I left Costco.

Because there was something wonderfully ordinary about his story.

He didn’t found a technology company.

He didn’t become a venture capitalist.

He didn’t build a medical practice or sell a company for millions.

He drove a forklift.

Then he got up the next morning and drove it again.

And again.

And again.

For thirty years.

He came from very little.

He worked.

He supported his mother.

Later, he supported his own family.

He put money away.

He took advantage of the opportunities his job offered him.

And then he allowed time to do something that time is remarkably good at doing when we leave things alone long enough.

Compound.

The money compounded.

But I wonder whether other things did too.

Reliability compounds.

Competence compounds.

A reputation compounds.

Small decisions compound.

Getting up at an ungodly hour and going to work when nobody is applauding compounds.

Perhaps even contentment compounds.

Because the thing I remember most clearly about Vincent isn’t the million dollars.

I met the smile first.

Before I knew anything about his retirement account, his truck, his pension or his plans for Mexico, he was already the bloke who stopped what he was doing to walk some stranger across Costco and help him choose a drink.

At 10:30 in the morning, having started work at 2 a.m., he was still smiling.

Still talking.

Still interested.

Still happy to help.

And apparently quite happy to give a stranger the condensed version of his life story.

I’m glad he did.

There is a version of success we are shown all the time.

It usually has a title attached to it.

Founder.

CEO.

Doctor.

Investor.

Entrepreneur.

Something impressive enough to put underneath a photograph.

Vincent’s version sounds considerably less dramatic.

Forklift driver.

Thirty years.

Showed up.

Saved his money.

Looked after his family.

Enjoyed his life.

And now, somewhere on the other side of all those two-in-the-morning starts, is Mexico.

Maybe there is a lesson in that.

Maybe there are several.

I don’t imagine Vincent has spent much time turning his life into a philosophy.

He just seems to have lived it.

And all because I couldn’t find a drink in Costco, I got to spend a few minutes with a man who stood tall.

Proud.

Confident.

Content.

Assured.

Not because he had conquered the world.

Not because anybody knew his name.

But because he had built a life he could stand comfortably inside.

He had worked.

He had provided.

He had saved.

He had looked after the people he loved.

And thirty years later, he could tell a stranger about it with a smile on his face.

I was happy to meet him.

I only went in for a drink.

Be like Vincent.