My First Boss

Passing through my hometown of Chapin, S.C. always makes me nostalgic for the good ol’ days. This summer I passed through and remembered my first boss, Mr. Wicker.

Believe it or not, my first job was as a school bus driver. Until 1987, the legal age to drive a school bus in South Carolina was 16. I started driving as soon as I turned 16 in the tenth grade. Don’t worry, this isn’t one of my “dangerous idea” columns. Instead, it’s about the leadership lessons I learned from Mr. Wicker.

Although it seems bizarre now, the system actually worked pretty well. The student drivers got paid to drive to school and a great parking spot. The school got cheap labor that didn’t know what unions were.

But the brain behind it all was Mr. Wicker. Each year, Mr. Wicker hand-picked about 30 students to go through the testing and training process.

He was pretty good at this task because he was also the vice principal in charge of discipline. Everyone had a healthy fear of Mr. Wicker. Rumors abounded about the implements of torture hidden in his office.

This responsibility, however, allowed him to know just about everyone in town and he had a pretty good idea about which students were responsible enough to handle a bus full of K-12 students.

Mr. Wicker chose drivers from every walk of life: black and white, male and female, athletes and artists. He also liked to keep busses within families. My older brother drove as did my younger sister.

After putting us through the ringer to make sure we were able to safely perform our duties, Mr. Wicker trusted us and supported us. When any conflict arose, he assumed that the bus driver was in the right. If I thought a student needed to be suspended from the bus, he (or she) was suspended. My recommendations carried the same weight as any teacher’s.

I never abused this trust because I knew that it had to be earned. Mr. Wicker’s trust in us caused us to act in trustworthy ways.

With this trust, however, came great responsibility. Mr. Wicker was in the parking lot every afternoon as the busses left. One day I pulled out of the lot when a car was in my blind spot. The car had time to stop before we collided, but Mr. Wicker was waiting for me the next day with a stern warning.

When necessary, Mr. Wicker was willing to go beyond stern warnings. Most of the full-time drivers were seniors and the juniors and sophomores served as substitutes. I received a full-time route as a junior, however, because one of the senior drivers was allowing his friend to stand in the stairwell along the route. Mr. Wicker didn’t tolerate blatant disregard for safety procedures and the senior was fired and replaced by a junior.

I learned a lot more from Mr. Wicker, but these simple lessons would seem to be relevant in any organization. Leaders should select employees carefully, make sure they’re trained well, and then trust them to do their job.

If Mr. Wicker was able to trust a bunch of high school kids with the lives of hundreds of children, I wonder why so many organizational leaders have trouble trusting their grown employees.