Name: Leta Dickinson

Year: Junior

Majors: Journalism, Environmental Science

CFS Program: Field Studies in the Humanities

Employer: Yellow Tractor LLC

After working as a climbing coach, writing tutor, and SCUBA instructor, this CFS position was my most conventional job. It was about time that I took on a job that had regular hours and business casual dress. One where I had a lunch break and meetings. A job where I had a boss who had a boss who had a boss. Before my first day, I couldn’t help but wonder what my office space might look like, or what my co-worker interactions would be like. Coming from Silicon Valley, many of my peers had tech internships where their offices were at the cutting edge of modernity. They told me about the rooftop yoga at Facebook, the employee-run gardens at Google and the state-of-the-art gym at Apple. It was my turn to experience the conventional work scene, and I was ready.

Flash forward to my first day on the job: I rode the train downtown alongside men and women in suits and eagerly showed up…to a condominium. As it turns out, the IH–or international headquarters–of Yellow Tractor was my boss’ condominium complex. My coworkers? Another intern who sat beside me at my boss’ kitchen counter. I couldn’t help the wave of confusion that washed over me, but I vowed to work hard regardless. It was an opportunity to learn as much as I could.

This past week, my boss, the other intern and I were on the South Side to check on a community garden the company had donated to the neighborhood. Even from afar, we could tell it was overrun with weeds and grasses creeping through the tomato vines. All of our hearts sank and we approached the unkempt planters. As we attacked the weeds, passing neighbors, intrigued, approached us. We exchanged light banter and initiated partnerships and made plans to engage the community. Before long, they were collecting overgrown lettuce alongside us and I could feel the excitement, tangible, among the people around me–it was about more than the garden now. It was about uniting under a shared goal to build a network of relationships that would feed the community on a different level than the produce we were growing together. It was about making change in the ways that we could, which in this case, were donated planters and plants.

It makes sense to me now, in retrospect. Yellow Tractor has had to make sacrifices in order to hold on to its core ethics. Instead of focusing on profits and growth that would have materialized in the form of progressive offices and many employees, the company holds community and long-term benefits for its clients at its heart. When our gardens stop producing the results we promise, we aren’t afraid to turn around and address the issue. More important than the company are the customers. That, to me, is a more important lesson than anything I would have learned in the conventional job setting I thought I was entering.