The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [162]
Let me suggest this: by trying to find God in all things, not just the work itself. First of all, through the people around them. This is perhaps the easiest of routes.
When I was in high school and college, to earn money for tuition I worked in a variety of summer jobs, where I met many people who detested their work. For a few summers, I took on the typical summer jobs for an adolescent boy in the 197os—delivering newspapers, mowing lawns, washing dishes and busing tables in a series of restaurants, caddying, and working as a movie theater usher. But one job taught me more about miserable work than all the rest combined.
The summer after my freshman year at college I worked three jobs. In the evenings I worked as an usher at a local movie theater; on Saturdays and Sundays I worked as a waiter in a small restaurant; weekdays I worked on an assembly line in a local packaging plant. That last one was easily the worst job I’ve ever had. But I counted myself fortunate to get it—since it paid more than either of the other two jobs.
Here was my schedule: Up at 6:00 a.m. for a shower. Wolf down some cereal. Stand at the front door waiting for a friend to pick me up, since I had no car. By 7:00 I was expected to be “on the line,” standing in front of a deafening, room-sized machine that shoved pills into boxes and disgorged the filled boxes onto a rapidly moving conveyor belt.
My job was to take the smaller boxes that came shooting off the line and put them into bigger boxes, and then cover them with plastic shrink wrap. Farther down the line, another person packed them into bigger boxes. Finally someone loaded them onto a wooden pallet. At the head of the line, workers tore huge sheets of “blister packs” of pills and loaded them into the hopper, which poured them into the belt.
I hated it. Everyone hated it. Every ten minutes I checked the clock on the wall to see how much closer lunchtime was. After lunch, I watched the clock and prayed for (or at least anticipated) the end of the shift at 4:00. At lunchtime some of the college-age workers smoked pot in the trash-filled parking lot to relieve the boredom. And at least once a week someone threw a wooden ruler into the machine to shut it down temporarily; then we all took a break while someone called the repairman. That was the high point of the week. But for the rest of the time everyone was miserable.
But surprisingly, three women on the line laughed almost the entire day. Having worked in the plant for several years, they knew one another and spent the day chatting about their children, their husbands, their homes, and their plans for the weekend. Gradually they drew me into their circle, where conversation focused mainly on how much we hated the job. By summer’s end they were ribbing me about all sorts of things: how slow I was, how young I was, how skinny I was, how much dust got in my hair, and, especially, how afraid I was of sticking my hand in the machine to fix it when it jammed. (The metal gears could easily rip a finger off.) “Is you a man or is you a mouse?” one would tease.
They hated their jobs but loved one another.
Since that time, I have worked in several places where people may not have enjoyed their work but enjoyed one another. Celebrating birthdays, sharing interests in television shows, socializing outside of work, consoling one another on losses, trading photos of children and grandchildren—these are ways of connecting on an often intimate level. This important facet in the workplace often goes overlooked in discussions of the spirituality of work: finding God in others even in the midst of a crummy job.
The second way that one might find God in the midst of a difficult job is by understanding that your job is directed toward a larger goal.