Hired by a security firm to watch over the indoor sculpture exhibits at The Grounds for Sculpture, in Hamilton, NJ, USA, this guard came over to me one day when I started studying one of the exhibits. I'd not seen him before. He started telling me all about the sculpture, what its name was, the sculptor's name, and something about the piece. He sounded just like one of the docents who lead tours there. He took me around to several other pieces and again told me similar information about each one! Finally, I thanked him and said I wanted to see the exhibits upstairs, too. He didn't follow me up there.

After I'd perused the exhibits on the upper level, and had started photographing them, I heard over the balcony railing, someone explaining about one of the sculptures downstairs. But this man's voice was very low. So, curious, I peeked over the railing wall and saw the scene below.

Lunch time for this security guard. He was sitting in the chair by a door, with his lunch in one hand. However, the other hand was moving up and down to emphasize the words he was saying softly to himself. He was memorizing the docents' information and was making sure he had it - word perfect!

This man was going far beyond the duty he was hired for. He was the first security guard I'd seen who had actually taken enough interest in the sculptures to find out about them and then to learn how to explain them to people.

How many people, do you suppose, actually will do much more than just what they are paid to do? How many try to be "word perfect" or otherwise "perfect" in their jobs? How many go that extra mile? How far will you and I go in our jobs?

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