The Hired Hand Who Reported to the Rooster
A college student on his first day at the farm decided the rooster was the foreman and took every single order from him for three days.
Every summer I hire a few young people to help with the harvest and the animals. They arrive in clean sneakers and enormous optimism, and by August they know how to drive a tractor and have forgotten what clean sneakers are. It is the best part of my year, and I have written a few things about farm jobs and careers over the years because of it.
Last June I hired a college student named Devin, studying something with the word 'systems' in it. He was polite, curious and a little bit anxious. I gave him a pair of work gloves, a water bottle and a short talk about where everything was, and I told him that Napoleon would show him the ropes. Napoleon is my rooster. I meant it as a joke.
Devin did not take it as a joke. He stood very still, listened and nodded. I pointed out the sheds and the barn and went inside for coffee, and when I came back twenty minutes later, Devin was standing in the middle of the hen yard with a clipboard, watching Napoleon strut. 'He started crowing at six-fifteen,' he told me, 'so I assume the day begins at six-fifteen.' I told him that was a fair assumption.
For three days, Devin took his cues from the rooster. When Napoleon crowed, he took a water break. When Napoleon walked to the feed shed, Devin followed with a bucket. He asked me once, in a very quiet voice, whether the rooster had been through a performance review. I said the last one had been inconclusive. Devin nodded and wrote it down.
On the fourth day, I finally told him the truth. He took it well. He admitted he had been confused by the feathers, but that the rooster had never given him a bad instruction. By August he was the best hand I had ever hired, and he told his professor the whole story as an example of workplace hierarchy. He got an A. I told the tale at farm.FM and Napoleon has demanded a raise.
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