Mr. Helpful

I had to go in to the office for a few hours over the weekend and took Cristian with me. While we were there, we made a trip to the men's room and Cristian made the observation that the faucet he was washing his hands in had very low water pressure. He turned to me and said "Dad, this faucet doesn't work. We should put an 'Out of Order' sign on it."

I couldn't think of a good reason why not, so I indulged him and said we'd go back to my office and find something to write a note on. I have plenty of post-its so Cristian wrote his sign in blue highlighter and scampered back to the men's room to put up his sign. We left about an hour afterwards and I didn't think about Cristian's sign the rest of the weekend.

I showed up to work on Monday and when I made my first trip to the restroom I noticed that Cristian's sign was still there. My first instinct was to take it down so that there wouldn't be any "issues" over handwritten signs around the office. I resisted and left it there to see how long it would last. I went back a number of times throughout the day and his sign was there every time. I thought that for sure, the cleaning crew would throw the post-it away when they made their rounds at the end of the day on Monday.

When I went to the restroom on Tuesday morning, not only was the sign still there, but the building fix-it guy was working on the faucet! Who knew that a seemingly fleeting observation from an 8 year old would actually get our faucet fixed. I hadn't used that faucet for at least year because of the low water pressure! Go figure.