God, I Hate My Job and There’s No Escape

It’s rare to come across someone who is genuinely fond of their job, or so it seems. How many of your friends seem very fulfilled in their roles? Do you feel excited as you dress yourself in corporate clothes and corporate slang? I doubt anyone of us are excited about the fourth email that finds you well. You might be thinking:

I’d rather not be found at all.

Whether it’s an awful boss, nagging colleagues or the loss of dreams as you board the one hour bus to the big city-God does offer us hope. Work wasn’t created after the fall but before it. Yet, it’s obvious that for a lot of us, our nine to five, feels a lot more like toil than garden-of-eden-tilling. What do we do? God, I hate my job, but I love you. What’s the answer?

I think my experience as a waiter in Ontario might provide a little bit of insight into an answer, that I am still trying to discover and grasp.

I remember donning the black vestments that would blur me into the dingy background as a member of staff. The restaurant was aged with plastic often disguised as mahogany, and carpets that reeked of red ale. I found myself in a peculiar position. After flying through life as a privileged, private-schooled, university-educated, Dubai-raised, silver-if not copper-spoon-tasting adolescent- I was faced with an unpleasant reality. The bitter taste of a service job. The metallic taste of an uncertain schedule resting in my mouth like tapioca bits. Most of us have been here.

It was a whole new world for me. No one in Dubai had grown up doing bluecollar jobs. People spoke of fancy internships at triple-barrelled names but no one had worked flipping burgers. It simply wasn’t done. I also reckon it was illegal for someone below eighteen to work. This was slightly new. My bosses were excited about the prospect of a brown-skinned man joining their team. They bore the scent of uneasy immigration, a trifle formed of rejection, discomfort and the loss of a homeland. They made up for it with misplaced egos and by shutting off the world by conversing in Tamil. That was the realm they had control over and they wouldn’t let anyone in.

I was an utter disappointment to them. I didn’t understand their jokes, and to their chagrin, they soon discovered that I was nothing but a coconut. A brown man with British sensibilities and a Canadian passport. To them, the worst of three worlds. They noticed that I could blend in with the locals, that they laughed louder when I talked to them, that while I was uncomfortable with my identity at times, I wasn’t exactly ashamed and this couldn’t do. They called me the little professor from that point on. They joked about the way I stood. They asked me if I thought I owned the place. No, I wouldn’t want to, I’m sorry. I did my best to be subservient, but I was always in the wrong. I was accused of being backward, stupid, and misplaced. I remember scrubbing toilets and the peace of it was slightly disturbing for a second. I was glad to be on my knees and away from their comments.

My landlord and landlady was stalwart in the face of such minor opposition. A lot of Canada faced this life everyday, a lot of them would never escape.

They offered me a solution.

“You’ve got to Brother Lawrence it, man.”

Who was Brother Lawrence?

Brother Lawrence was a man separated by time, sea and occupation. He was a monk who served in Paris as a cook in the 17th century. However, his career didn’t start with the business of peace but in the business of war. He served as a soldier for years before devoting himself to a monastic lifestyle. I suspect this helped him with the dull, the repetitive rhythms of the cloister.

His solution.

Think of God in the small and the bare and the little.

“We can do little things for God; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of him, and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before him, who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king. It is enough for me to pick up but a straw from the ground for the love of God.” — Brother Lawrence

For Lawrence, the work did not matter, it was the Master that did. I was succumbed myself to a slight lie. My masters were the eternally grumpy, sharp South-Asian men that grimaced as I entered work. The ones who couldn’t stop calling me names. The ones that would extend kindness and insult in the same breath.

Yet, they were temporary in my life. God was eternal.

I went to work the next day. My blue, surgical mask in the advent of COVID masked my small, heartfelt prayers. Change the pop filter. Do it for God. Collect straws. Do it for God.

“I hate this. I hate this. I hate this.” I’d mutter to God. Yet, I kept going. To my body, the experience was so much information. I felt ignored as the owner’s friends walked in with their knitted toques and Canada Goose jackets. I was passed by like a stranger on a cobbled road. For the first time, I wasn’t shielded by my lineage or my status or my background. My job had hidden all these details in thick layers of blue-collared submission.

It was good for me.

I carried pans and packed poutine shreds. I filled so many containers with cocktail sauces and mayonnaise.

Man, Canadians really like dip.

Low moments were less frequent. I remember kicking a vending machine to grab ahold of socks that got stuck.

“Who buys socks from a vending machine?” I was asked when I got home.

Apparently, no one but that day, slamming that machine with my foot, the machine slamming my mind with despair- all I could think of was the cabin socks that I couldn’t receive.

Yet, something was different. God was present. Not that he hadn’t been before. As I made my way through customers, menus and faulty pop machines, I made sure I was aware of his gentle, reassuring presence. It kept me going.

I’m not going to lie. I never quite reached the fever pitch of victory. I think that’s still waiting for me, yet I did manage to play the chords of persistence for a short while. It wasn’t a long experience but it was necessary.

I’d enter that restaurant and whisper:

Brother Lawrence it, man.

There might be no immediate escape from your job in person, but we can escape from the attitude of the fall. We can reclaim a blessing of communing with God, we don’t have to do it alone. He will never leave nor forsake us. When we carry his yoke, it is lighter.

It’s a simple principle. Get through the next five seconds.

Do it again and do it with God.