by Zoë Pollock
This week readers remembered some of their first jobs and how it changed them. One reader contemplates the idea of service:
I've never thought about it this way, but I think that my two years working at Chick-fil-A likely were formational to my not-yet-budding call to ordained ministry. One of the principle marks of my vocation as I have discerned it is the importance of sharing a sacred meal.
While cursing under my breath in the drive through when people ordered a Whopper wasn't the best sign of hospitality, being responsible for serving people, helping to make things right when we messed up, or taking one for the team when they wanted something they didn't order all started a process of serving others.
People coming to the drive through window were people. The woman who ordered the salad with four dressings and the Diet Coke (I sitll remember that she drove a Toyota 4Runner and came about 4:30 every day) was as reliable as regular attenders at church. People coming to share the Eucharist are people coming hungry for something: community, spiritual nourishment, physical susteance, whatever. People coming to Chick-fil-A were hungry, too, and that could affect how nice they were – or not.
When someone thanked me I replied with company line, "My pleasure." The Church holds that the law of prayer governs the law of belief. Through coming to say "My pleasure" over time it came to be my pleasure. Our role in working registers was to be gracious hosts thankful that guests had chosen to dine with us (inviting the line forward with "I can help the next guest over here" rather than "Who's next?!"). I think that passing the correct order out the window and consistently being gracious (regardless of how the person in the car acted) probably shaped me for standing with a paten in my hand, looking people in the eye, and saying "The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven" not as someone who can control who does and doesn't eat, but as someone who's been given the privilege of serving. I think one of the miracles of the Eucharist is that the faithful come together and share a meal – without choosing the guest list or walking away because of who else is on it.
Working in the drive through started that work of hosting without regard for a person's external qualifications years before I realized it would be my job for life.
Another reader worked Customer Service at Sears:
When I was working there I thought, boy, this is really the best education a young guy could ever have! When I grow up, I'm going to tell everyone that they should work at a customer service center to learn how to deal with difficult people and everything else.
But when I grew up and read biographies of successful people, they all said the same thing. Each one worked a different job — waiter, car repairman, short order cook, paper delivery, day laborer, whatever. And each of these guys insisted that this is really the best education a young person could have and recommends that for everyone.
That's when it hit me — it isn't the job that teaches you anything. After all, there are plenty of people who are or were waiters who never learned a damn thing from their job. It's whether you bothered to learn from whatever job you might have: Successful people learn lessons where ever they are. That's the difference.
Another:
The most valuable lessons I remember from picking tomatoes, cucumbers (nasty prickly plants!) and hauling freight from trucks are not how to recognize a ripe tomato (never in the supermarket, not even Wholefoods), but the interactions with my career minimum wage folks. They've taught me why people vote for the Tea Party, why people are racists, sexist and do other completely irrational things. It's not irrational from their – be it limited – perspective. I have learned that semi-criminal kids that have been kicked of literally every high school in the city can be very nice, charming and honest – as long as they're not forced to sit still.
Also, I've learned that when you're hauling freight, it does not matter that you know the formulas governing torque, and that supposedly uneducated colleagues can figure out way faster how torque works than any physics class could teach them. Finally, it has taught me never to be arrogant about my supposed knowledge. I am lucky to have been in a situation where I could gather my knowledge. Many people have not been. That does not make them stupid. That makes them uneducated, but rarely due to their own failure.
Some of my favorite stories are the ones without an easy takeaway:
One summer in college, I walked to city hall in my hometown and asked to work for the town police force. I ended up getting a job at the town recycling center, which is a pleasant way of saying “town dump.” It was just (19 year old) me and Gino, a 50-something hardcase who ran the dump. Gino perpetually wore dirty jeans, a white t-shirt, and aviator glasses. Moustache. In the three months I worked there, I never saw Gino consume anything other than cigarettes and coffee. Maybe one time I saw him eat a sandwich.
Weekdays, rain or shine, Gino and I would help folks unload all their bottle, cans, and newspapers. I learned to balance walking on the top rail of dumpsters, picking out mis-separated bottles with a poker. Gino would vividly and misogynistically comment to me on any half-decent looking mother than would drive up – to the point of making a college kid blush, incredibly enough. Cursing was like breathing. Once, a guy came by with his wife and (sadly for him) dumped 30 years worth of Playboys. That was a celebratory day. I pulled a lot of great books and old National Geographics out of those dumpsters.
One day it rained, so the dump was closed to the public. About mid-morning, Gino took me in his truck to go get some coffee at the deli. On the way back, and without comment, he stopped by the town cemetery, where his visited the grave of his infant grandson, who had died a number of years before. I don’t remember asking at the time, but I seem to remember that it was SIDS, or something like it. I stood probably 20 feet behind him while he visited the grave. We rode back to work, and Gino talked about the baby, and how his daughter recently had another one. I didn’t say much.
That was many, many jobs ago (I write this sitting in my office as a lawyer). I’m not sure the lesson I learned can be well-articulated in a short email. But that job had more impact on me than I realized at the time.
The Dish 