These photographs should not really exist. They are of a very cute little girl at
Epcot. Every photo has a story to
tell. These are of my daughter and
I’m proud of the story behind these pictures. You probably don’t know the story so I’ll tell it to you. I know they say that every picture is
worth a thousand words, but these pictures are different. These pictures have 108,000 pictures
behind them. Give or take a few
thousand. I didn’t really count,
but I averaged the numbers. I was
a photographer at Epcot for three years between 1999 and 2002. I took about 150 pictures per day
at Epcot, five days per week for three years. If you figure I worked at least forty-eight weeks a year for
those three years, it comes out to about 108,000 pictures.
I worked for a company that contracted at Disney called Sharp
Shooter-Spectrum Imaging. You
could never meet a more zany and diverse group of people than the group that I
ran around with during those three years.
We were a band of misfits.
Now we are scattered all over the earth, but for a few short years we
huddled into a room that was actually a closet underneath Space Ship
Earth. There were over fifty of us
in those three years who went in to work each day to chase Disney guests for a
picture in front of Space Ship Earth, as they entered the gate. In those days we intentionally
approached guests for a photo because we had the opportunity to earn money for
achieving high sales. Now Disney
employs the photographers at Epcot.
While they do provide an excellent service, and they do use top quality
camera gear, I think they are missing that certain “need to survive” mentality
that made us good…and somewhat crazy.
You see we did this because we had something to prove. We needed to be motivated every day,
and we earned our living off of constantly being told “no” to one simple
question… “can I take your picture?”
We each quickly learned about the unwritten rules and expectations of
the normalcy of being rejected.
Rejection was part of the job.
But everyone had to be comfortable with being told no, because it was
the thirty to fifty times that we got that “yes” which brought us our daily
pay. We each had a stake in the
game because we earned a group commission in addition to our individual sales
commission. It was this group
interaction that made us accountable to the team, and made us have a vested
interest in each other. But it was
the ability to earn an individual sales commission that made us push ourselves
mentally on a daily basis. We had
to set individual goals for ourselves to achieve the standard of living that we
were expecting this job to provide.
The job was never intended to be a high-paying job, but there were a few
of us who did do pretty well.
Those folks had to endure challenging conditions. Florida heat during the summer gets to
about 110 degrees when you are standing on concrete. Eight hours of that a day can really make an impact on
you. My knees are in pretty bad
shape from getting up and down on the concrete a hundred times a day. Being told “no” about a thousand times
a day to the same question can also be kind of disheartening. (We always tried to come up with new
ways to try to get people to say yes to stopping for a photo.) All of these things combined to make a
group dynamic that will stay fresh in my mind forever.
It was during these years when I came to the end of myself. I often tell people now that there was
no more Billy left to mess up. It
came at a time when I was told that I had to change venues because my coworkers
thought I was unfair and mean. I
believe that my mean and unfair perception was due to my behavior while I was
running from God. Prior to that
time, I had been promoted to an assistant of sorts and spent part of my time
taking pictures, and part of my time helping with the daily operations of the
“closet.” Those promotions fed
into my entitled ego and I began to believe that the future would show that I
was needed as a leader, and management material. I found my little piece of real estate to plant my flag
into, and I decided that I would be able to build a foundation of future
leadership off of this little island of “Assistant Venue Coordinator” or
something like that. Honestly I
don’t even remember the title anymore.
I just didn’t want to have to actually go back to college because I
didn’t think I could pass the classes.
But having my ego handed to me that day when I was told I would have to
leave Epcot was a reminder that my identity was not about being an authority
figure. It wasn't working because
I was working against God's plan for my life. My identity was in Jesus Christ. Also, I made a commitment to my parents to go to
college. Leaders don’t
become leaders by running from their commitments. In my first attempt at being a leader I had used my own
standard of personal judgment on other people. The problem with that is that I wasn’t even living up to my
own standard of judgment, so it was pretty narcissistic and hypocritical to
expect other people to live up to it.
To shorten a long story I’ll say this. I took a few months to look at myself in the mirror, and was
accepted back in to college. I was
also allowed back to Epcot as a photographer. I also stopped running from God. I will never forget my moment of repentance about the sins I
had committed over the course of those years in rebellion against God. From that point on I became focused on
serving people instead of obsessing about leading people. This part was not a conscious decision,
it is just what naturally followed as a result of returning to the foot of the
cross. I spent my last year at
Epcot as a full time college student and just a regular photographer. No title or expectations for
leadership. A funny thing happened
during that year. As I was
focused on serving my coworkers in the job, they began coming to me for things
that felt a lot like leadership.
The more I helped people without any expectations for building up my ego,
the more I realized that leadership works best for me when I’m in the mindset
of a servant.
I graduated from college the week a different company took over the
photography at Epcot. Ironic
huh? I went on to a different job
and attended graduate school for psychology full time. Instead of failing out this time, I
earned straight A's all the way through, which is a different story for another
day. But after graduate school I
was responsible for the safety and treatment of twelve foster children and twenty
staff members at a therapeutic group home. I had become an authority figure. I didn't ask for it.
In fact, it was a role that ate therapists for lunch. I always remembered the lessons that I
learned at Epcot, and taught the foster kids and the staff to overcome the
unfairness that they were focused on by serving others. They came to me with the idea that the
world owed them something, and for the most part, it was hard to argue that
point. The kids had already had
everything stripped from them. The
staff were responsible for things that were seemingly beyond their
control. But teaching them to
serve others was much better than any behavior modification program. Encouraging someone to help their
friends and their authority figures is easier to do and more appropriate than
behavioral therapy in the moment.
Everyone can understand loving your neighbor.
How about you? Do you feel
inspired to lead? If you do, then
what is your motivation to lead?
Is it to gain wealth? Power
and fame? Do you feel like the
world owes you something? It's a
painful road to try to convince the world that it needs you. It's much easier to meet people where
they hurt and to try to help them overcome the thing that is holding them back
from accomplishing their goals.