TWO-TIME OLYMPIAN SEYI SMITH ON HIS FAILED PAPER ROUTE.
SO AFTER JUST TWO WEEKS, I QUIT, BUT THEY MADE ME GIVE TWO WEEKS NOTICE, WHICH I DID. SO, ALTOGETHER, I LASTED A MONTH. I CAN’T IMAGINE MY MOM WAS TOO PROUD AT THE TIME, BUT I WORKED HARD LATER IN LIFE TO MAKE HER PROUD. — SEYI SMITH
Olympian Seyi Smith has the rare honour of having competed in both the Summer and Winter Olympic games — on Canada’s 100-metre relay team in London in 2012 and on the bobsled team in Pyeongchang in 2018. But it turns out Smith didn’t always have the work ethic necessary for smashing success. The athlete (and electrical engineer by day) confesses that however bad this summer job was, he was an even worse employee. As told to Rosemary Counter.
Icould tell you a few obvious stories — I was an assistant coach one summer, and I worked at a gym in Calgary — but what really comes to mind is one summer I spent delivering Pennysaver newsletters.
I had just finished Grade 10, so this was the early 2000s, and it was basically hand-delivered junk mail. They’d drop a box of it at my door at the beginning of the weekend and I was supposed to organize it and fold it nicely and then deliver it by the end of the weekend. They paid me a few cents on a per house basis.
I didn’t really want to work, but all my friends had jobs and my parents were bugging me to at least do something. I think I must have called one of those 1-800 numbers from an ad — probably from Pennysaver itself — and it didn’t seem that bad. But as soon as I actually started, I hated it immediately. It was so boring, and not as easy as I’d hoped, and I was always covered in paper cuts.
I complained a lot, and soon enough it was my mom who was doing the organizing and I’d go house-to-house doing the drop-offs. I think she was concerned I was going to quit and never learn any life skills, so she volunteered. I’d sit with her, and maybe I did a couple now and then, but she did the vast majority of the work. I justified it to myself at the time that I was out there, braving the elements, doing the hard work. I never even shared my paycheque with her either. I’m not proud.
And I didn’t even do my half very well. I had too much pride to just throw them in a garbage can and outright lie, but not enough pride to cut a few corners. There were times when the driveway was too long and I was too lazy so I’d just sort of throw them towards the house and keep going. I figured plausible deniability was key. It didn’t work though: A strong wind would come and blow them away and there’d be Penny savers all over the street and it was all my fault.
Within a few days, people started calling the company and complaining. I realized if I wanted the job I would have to do it properly: Deliver it to the doorstep and find a mailbox or a rock to be a paperweight. I also realized I just didn’t want to do this anymore. I wanted to be an
engineer by then, and I was getting more into sports, and this job wasn’t helping me move forward with either of those. It was nice to be outside, and sometimes I got to deliver to my friend’s houses, but otherwise there was no point.
So after just two weeks, I quit, but they made me give two weeks notice, which I did. So, altogether, I lasted a month. I can’t imagine my Mom was too proud at the time, but I worked hard later in life to make her proud.
Pennysaver taught me what not to do if you want to succeed, and that there are no shortcuts to be had if you want to do something well.
You can’t cut corners and you can’t just quit when things get hard. Everything I do now, no matter what it is, I know I can’t just chuck something out there and hope for the best.