How I Became A Grease Monkey and Found Freedom

This is my story: of a man who found freedom and peace of mind. It’s simple, but I wanted to share it here:

Ten years ago I was a corporate executive for a major investment firm. I really did have everything that anyone could want (materially): my MBA and a single focus had brought me to the top of the corporate world and I was VP of finance at 37. I was controlled and in control. My success really did seem to be without limits. At that time, my wife left me because she almost never saw me. It had an impact, but not much (or at least that is what I thought).

For several months before the realization, a pressure was building in me. I would feel overwhelmed by total emptiness – out of nowhere. I felt like I was running, but I didn’t know what I was running from. At times, I felt panicky and tense, but never let it show. My wife’s leaving was the last straw; she just walked out. I was shocked and stunned, but didn’t think about it.

Finally, one day – literally – everything changed.

I was obsessed with my possessions, especially my clothes. My closets were filled with tailored English and Italians suits and rows of perfectly polished shoes. My dresser contained piles of designer shirts and socks. Every hair had to be in place. Every shirt was white and starched. Everything had to look perfect.

One night I was working late (like every night!). I have to explain my attire that night for this to make sense: a two thousand dollar blue pinstriped business suit, made on Savile Row, a starched white shirt from London’s Jermyn street, a silk Hermes tie with matching pocket square perfectly placed, monogrammed gold cufflinks and tie pin, a pair of bench-made captoe dress shoes made by Church’s in London, polished like mirrors and silk socks. I was THE essence of corporate success. NOBODY was better dressed than I was.

I was at my computer in my office worrying about – yes, believe it or not – the “poor job” the shoeshine man had done on my shoes. My mind wandered back to the shoes. Again. And again. The tension built. My blood pressure went up. Then something changed.

Reality hit. It hit me with a BANG.

I was a smug, pompous, arrogant, shallow fool. Yes – fool is the word. The sheer stupidity of my own thoughts hit me. I began to laugh, and I mean really laugh. For the next thirty minutes, it was as if the whole carefully structured life I had built collapsed. I thought of all I had accomplished, and it looked like nothing. Literally nothing. Everything looked different. I felt an incredible weight lift off me. As this realization hit me, I laughed harder – alone in my office. I realized huge changes had to be made. It seemed that all I had invested in counted for nothing.

I looked down at my treasured and expensive shoes – and decided to do something that would have been unimaginable earlier that day. For a moment it was difficult – but I knew I had to take the plunge. I took those fancy shoes off. I took off those silk socks too. Right there at my mahogany desk in my corner office. Me – the controlled, uptight, high and mighty corporate financial executive. Those shoes had become a trap, a wall, and my jailers. They were brand new. I had spent $700 for those shoes. They had become my identity. Until now. I folded the socks, stuffed them in the shoes and dropped them in the trash.

I then propped my bare feet on my desk. I was a fool. I didn’t care. My life would be different. Now I was barefoot: like most of the people in the world. My polished leather shoes had been a cocoon of protection and privilege and status. I had walked along the halls of the office building enjoying their clicking sound and their power. Now they were gone.

Then the janitor walked in to pick up the garbage and looked at me like I was crazy. (I had forgotten about him on his rounds) His reaction was understandable. The impeccably dressed and perfectly groomed VP was sitting at his desk in his suit and tie, with his bare feet on his desk.

He then picked up the trashcan and found my discarded footwear.

He asked me if I was alright. I said “Better than all right!”

He THEN asked if he could have them, since I was throwing them away! I said he certainly could. We then proceeded to have a talk. For eight years, I had never even looked at him. Now, he was suddenly human to me. I invited him to sit in my leather executive chair. He looked stunned, but did – and we talked about his life and all his hard work. There he was, in my chair, holding my shiny shoes, while I sat on the floor barefoot – it was poetic justice.

It is difficult to explain what a huge change that night was. I suppose it had been building up for a long time, below the conscious level. Now it exploded.

My thoughts went to how condescending I had been to this man. I really had thought I was better than he was because of my job and my clothes and my paycheck and my education. I wanted to make it up to him.

I then realized we were about the same size and build. I asked him for a pair of extra coveralls and some old shoes lying around, which he supplied. I went into the men’s room and took off, for the last time, my business suit and ties and braces, my cufflinks and starched shirt – all of which seemed ridiculous, absurd. I put on the coveralls, returned and presented my business clothes to the janitor. He shook his head; what I thought was a gift meant nothing to him. So we left, both of us laughing.

For the next few hours I just walked through the streets, dressed as a janitor in coveralls and plastic flip-flops. I dumped my suit, tie and briefcase in a dumpster and wandered. I was actually seeing people for the first time, and they just looked at me as a blue collar worker between shifts. They did not call me sir; I would never be called “sir” again. There were no walls between us.

That night, after driving home in the coveralls and flip-flops, I made plans.

The next day I stunned my colleagues by quitting my job; that week, I sold my Porsche and bought a used pickup truck. A few weeks later, I sold my condo and most of the furniture and I moved into a small frame house – where I still live. I gave away most of the money; some of it went to my ex (as it should be). All my stock options are gone. All of my savings are gone.

As for all those expensive suits and shoes and ties – I donated them all to goodwill. Everything else went too: my tennis rackets and golf clubs; the tuxedo and the patent leather pumps that I had worn for corporate black-tie events; my diplomas and my resumes. I had lost all interest in those things. I realized that I was NOT a “suit”. That was NOT the real me. That was an image, a false identity. I hated the stress. I just wanted to earn enough to live.

I left the white-collar world and prepared to enter the world of manual labor. I looked for work and found a job as – yes – an assistant grease monkey, or assistant mechanic. It took a while to convince the owner I was serious. I learned to change oil and then how to repair engines. That is my new career. From investment banker to grease monkey: that is my story!

My physical appearance has been transformed. I look completely different now. My hundred-dollar yuppie haircut has been replaced by a tangled mane that I tie in a pony-tail with a rubber band. I stopped shaving, and my clean-cut look has been replaced with a scraggly beard. My language is filled with “ain’t”; I have fallen off the high horse of the elitist corporate ladder and landed in a peaceful and joyful place.

I go barefoot as often as possible, including outdoors. The soles of my feet are now so hardened and wide now that the Itallian wingtips and English business shoes I once wore with such confidence wouldn’t even fit. The corporate executive that used to be me NEVER went barefoot.

My formerly manicured hands, as well as my arms have dirt and oil in the skin and under the nails. I even got several tattoos, including one on my neck – something no investment banker would ever do.

No one would let me in the boardroom now!

To think I had once worn cufflinks every day! And business suits! I now live on the other side of the tracks now; I have become what I once despised and feared. I couldn’t return to the corporate life if wanted to – and I never would.

I wear coveralls all the time now, or jeans – and either work boots or flip-flops: a complete and total change from the tailored pinstripes and polished leather shoes and silk ties of my past. I have friends now who work at blue-collar jobs like mine. I am comfortable with them. I AM one of them now. I never laughed before. Now I laugh all the time. It would have been utterly impossible for me to even imagine that ten years ago.

Now the corporate “suits” that come to the garage where I work look at me with pity: the wild haired tattooed grease monkey wearing a cap saying “Blue Collar Hero”! They don’t know that I was once one of them. For them, it may be right. For me, it was a prison. (I wonder, maybe, if some of them stepped out of their polished shoes, would they find a different self waiting for them?)

Some times, when I catch sight of myself in a mirror and I see the grizzled, tattooed, pony-tailed man I have become, dirty fingernails and bare feet and beard and tee shirt and all, I laugh as hard as I did that first night.

Posted by: Eric the Grease Monk
Views: 22036
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