Luke the Custodian
Luke works as a custodian in a hospital. One day, there was an incident in the room of a comatose patient. Here is how Luke recounted it, edited for brevity:
“From what I heard, his son had been in a fight and was paralysed. That’s how he ended up in the hospital. He was in a coma, and it didn’t look like he was going to come out of it.
I went in to clean his room. The patient’s father was there every day, all day, but he smoked cigarettes. He’d stepped out for a smoke when I went in to clean.
When he came back and saw me in the hall, he just freaked out, accusing me of not cleaning the room. At first, I got defensive. I was ready to argue with him, but something stopped me. Instead, I said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ll go clean it again.’
So I went back and cleaned it again, this time with him watching. I could understand where he was coming from. His son had been in the hospital for six months. He was frustrated. And I wasn’t angry with him. I just understood.”
As a custodian in a major hospital, Luke’s job description likely includes things like mopping floors, vacuuming, stripping and waxing surfaces, operating carpet-cleaning equipment, taking out rubbish etc. It says nothing about patient care, empathy, or human connection. Based on the job description alone, Luke could just as easily be a custodian in a bank or a shoe factory.
But Luke was not a generic custodian. He was a hospital custodian.
If he had followed the job description to the letter, he could have said, “I already cleaned the room,” and left it at that. He could have escalated the matter to a supervisor. That would have been reasonable.
Instead, he recognised that the official duties were only part of the job. The deeper part was helping patients and their families feel cared for, even in small ways. He understood that his work sat inside the larger purpose of the hospital itself.
The Aim of the Work
Aristotle had a word for this: telos. It means the purpose or end of a thing.
In healthcare, the telos is care.
That does not tell you exactly what to do in every situation. It does not hand you a script. But it does give you a way to judge your actions. It reminds you what the work is for.
This is where practical wisdom comes in. Aristotle called it phronesis. It is the kind of wisdom that helps us decide what to do in the messy situations where no rule can do the thinking for us.
A rule can tell you how to clean a room. It cannot tell you what to do when a father, worn down by grief and fear, lashes out at you in the hallway.
You are no longer dealing with a cleaning issue. You are dealing with a father in pain
Luke could see that the father’s anger was not really about the room. His son had been in a hospital bed for six months. The man was exhausted, frightened, and carrying more than Luke could probably imagine.
So he cleaned the room again. It may not look like much, but it required judgement
Rules and Humanity
Rules matter. Every job needs them. They create order, set expectations, and help things run properly.
But rules have limits.
Followed without judgment, they can drain the humanity from a situation. They can make a person feel like a task, a number, or a problem to be managed.
This is where the modern workplace often gets itself into trouble. We build systems around compliance, measurement, incentives, and performance. Some of that is necessary. But when rules become the whole picture, something vital gets pushed out.
Qualities like courage, kindness, restraint, humility, and empathy do not fit neatly into a checklist. Yet they are often what matter most.
Wisdom begins by asking better questions.
What is this work really for?
What does this moment call for?
What would it mean to respond well here?
Luke did not ignore the rules. He went beyond them. He saw that cleaning the room again was not about surrendering an argument. It was about honouring the deeper purpose of the place he worked in.
Wisdom as Practice
Wisdom is not just a trait you either have or do not have. It is something you develop.
You learn it the same way you learn courage, honesty, or patience: through repetition, through failure, through paying attention, through living.
That is part of why Luke’s story is important
He was not drawing on a policy manual. He was drawing on judgment formed over time. Somewhere along the way, he had learned how to read a moment properly. He had learned that doing the job well sometimes means seeing beyond the task itself.
And that feels especially relevant now.
Most of us work in environments thick with systems, metrics, software, procedures, and now generative AI. These tools can be useful. They can make us faster, safer, and more efficient. But they do not remove the need for judgment. In some ways, they make it more important.
As more routine and rule-based work gets absorbed by machines, the human task becomes harder to ignore.
We still need to decide what matters.
We still need to recognise the difference between what is technically correct and what is right in the situation.
We still need people who can read the room.
Luke understood that in a hospital, a room can be clean and a family can still feel uncared for.
He cleaned the room again.
This essay is adapted from the book Practical Wisdom by Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe
DBN in Action
A quick note about the workshop:
In 3.weeks I’m running a small, in-person workshop in Richmond: Finding Meaning in Work.
If your work feels fine on paper but something feels off underneath, this is for you.
If you want tactical career advice, interview tips, or productivity hacks, it’s not.
You won’t be put on the spot. Sharing is optional. Most of the work is private reflection, with a few gentle prompts and small-group conversation if you want it.
If you’d like to spend a Saturday afternoon getting clearer on what matters to you, what you want more of, and what you’re done tolerating, you can read the details and book below (use DBN2026 at checkout)
And if you’re unsure, just reply with a sentence about your situation. I’ll tell you honestly if it’s a fit.
