Who is that guy?

Who is that guy?

When you first see him, he’s a forehead and a pair of eyes peeking above a tall yellow rectangular sign. Often, he wears a red cap on his head.

But as you pass the Livonia Lube Center at 35989 Plymouth Road each day, across from the Ford Transmission Plant, there he is – again.

He moves a bit behind the large plastic sign. Ah, he’s standing there promoting the business to passersby, you think.

He seems to be there virtually the entire day. He stands in rain, in snow, in subfreezing temperatures, in winds that on some days reach gusts of 40 MPH, the sometimes-insufferable heat and bright sunlight in July – any and every kind of weather.

It’s the high wind that’s the worst, he says. He struggles to grip the sign as the wind blows. In fall-like weather, he wears four layers of clothing on his upper torso. When it rains, he holds an umbrella with one hand, the sign with the other.

Who is he?

He is Charles Echols, and in what has to be a record for fortitude and dedication to a tough assignment, he has done this now for well over three years.

Echols, 49, works holding that sign six days each week, Monday – Saturday, from 8 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. each day. He has a cell phone, he says, but he can’t afford the monthly fee, and uses the phone to store phone numbers. 

He often rides a bicycle to and from work.

Echols lives with his mother in Detroit, and supports a five-year-old stepson who lives with his own mom, also in Detroit.

The sign he holds is lettering printed on a thin plastic sheet, its structure reinforced by a frame of attached two-by-fours.

Among the physical realities that affect him every day at work, Charles Echols knows that the bottom two-by-four will eventually wear down the toe box of his shoe, normally a boot but today a black athletic shoe. The boots are worn out, he says.

As we talked, he pointed to an area in the upper left of the sign that had recently been hit by a stone hurtled from Plymouth Road. The stone cracked a small portion of the sign, in what had to feel like a reminder of the danger he’s exposed to each day. What if the stone had hit him?

How do people react as they drive by? It runs the gamut, he says. Some drivers wave or honk their horns, greeting him each day. A carful of three youths that passes by will sometimes swear at him, and give him the finger. Once, he says, they threw a cup of coffee at him as they drove by. But he’s not an angry man, you can see. He is quietly philosophical about his job.

Once, before the holidays, a Ford employee from across the road stopped and gave him a turkey and $100. Echols was grateful.

Sometimes, he counts the passing cars to relieve the boredom. It’s hard to do much else, in addition to holding the sign.

Has he achieved the objective – has he improved the oil change and car wash business by increasing sales volume? He thinks so, saying, “It’s picked up a lot.”

Echols’ fortitude in facing southeastern Michigan’s weather each day is noteworthy, perhaps carrying a lesson learned for each of us. In the 42 months since he began, he’s held that sign for 10,000 hours.

He’s remarkably cheerful about it: “This job is treating me all right,” he says, without a moment’s hesitation.

Postscript

This story was first published in a newsletter for Ford’s Automatic Transmission Design organization. After reading it, several employees stepped forward and contributed a few dollars toward something for Charles. It was decided to buy him a top-notch pair of insulated, waterproof boots that would keep his feet warm on bitterly cold days. The boots will be given to him on Thursday, in time for Christmas.