Archive for Work
Ofertory
From St. Joseph I learned
To love my work
And to work for love
Excruciatingly passionate work
Love that is a lot of work, hard work
A passion that I resist hopelessly
And to which I hopelessly surrender
This work of mine is a work of love
Love of God
Love of my country and my people
Love of my family and my friends
Love of my neighbour, near and far
Known and unknown
Lovable and unbearable
Love of my love
My God, my Strength, my Love,
I, little that I am, offer you and beg you
Accept this my work of love
Bless this my work of love
Multiply this my work of love
Put Your love in this my work of love
Do with it what you will
As long as it’s pleasing to You
Add to it what I cannot add
Remove from it what I cannot remove
Even if it means taking it away from me
Even if it means removing me from myself
Hit delete, remove this selfish self from myself
Take away my egocentric ego
From my work, from my love
From me.
This work and this worker are Yours
They were created by You and for You
You put me into this
I trust You’ll get me out of it
This love and this lover are Yours
Created by You and for You
For the giving and for the taking
If You don’t want it, I don’t want it either
St. Joseph, patron saint of workers, of families
Of Canada, of the church
Of my own parish and my own family
Of my vocation and entire life
Twenty-nine years ago today
I was baptized in the parish
That bears your name
If that, perchance, grants me a wish
Here’s my wish, here’s my prayer:
Tell your wife,
To have a word with her Son
And tell Him
That I could use some extra help today
Thank you very much! Send word when you can!
Gratefully as always,
And then some more,
Ester.
Philosophical Accounting
This battered comic strip has been with me for years. I’ve taken it to my classes in Philosophy of Education. I have pinned it to the corkboard on my wall. It is now taped to my office door, because I feel it accurately and concisely describes all my qualifications for my current job.
As I said on my post “First of May”, I have a very simple summer job: I rent rooms to people who come to Toronto for short stays during the summer. Some of our guests are students, some aren’t. Some stay overnight, some stay for a week or two, some a month or two, some stay the whole four months. Some come from far away, some from across town. It’s a very interesting mix of people, and I like the chance to practice my interpersonal skills — something I don’t always get to do with my thesis work. And trust me: those get plenty of exercise in this job, both in quantity and variety of exercise.
The booking system has likely been the same for the last forty years, if not longer. It consists in two binders: the room binder and the people binder. My job is to keep the two synchronized at all times.
The room binder is a big grid chart. The vertical axis corresponds to the rooms we have. The horizontal axis marks the days of the month. Each page describes what happens in a particular house is any given month (five houses, four months, twenty pages).
Each time someone makes a reservation, or cancels their reservation, or decides to change rooms, I mark it on the room binder, like an elaborate game of Tetris. Only the Tetris blocks have needs and are treated with utmost respect. I always knew that all that investment of time and energy playing Tetris in my youth would pay off some day.
The people binder contains the Tetris block’s personal information, such as name, address, email, dates of arrival and departure, whether they want a single or a double room, whether they have read our rules and regulations (which most of them haven’t, I’m not sure I have myself, at least not since 2003. )
This year I revolutionized the people binder by inserting tabs that go from 1 to 31, May to August. This makes it easier to synchronize it with the room binder: if Mr. X is arriving July 6th, my mind doesn’t need to go from A to X to find Mr. X: it just goes to day needed, when needed. The tricky part is to know which is the day needed, an objector might say. To which I reply: that’s why we have the room binder. All very simple.
What about computer programs, you ask. To this I reply: we respect tradition here. Nothing has stood the test of time quite so well as the old pencil-and-paper methods we use. Cleaning staff, porters, bursar’s secretary, building supervisor: we all rely on face-to-face communication for our jobs to run well. No computerized, mechanized, mediated communication here: we want to brush up our interpersonal skills after all. It’s all millimetrically planned.
And that’s why it calls for someone trained in philosophical accounting.
First of May
Labour Day is a good day to start a new job. And that’s today, in many parts of the world. But not in Canada: here the First of May is just another working day.
But not quite. Whereas Labour Day in Canada marks the end of the summer and beginning of the school year, the First of May marks the beginning of the summer term, at least at University.
With the school year officially over yesterday, the month of May started with a New Year flavour to it. The temperature stayed between 5 and 15 degrees above zero, cloudy weather, definitely cooler than last New Year’s day. Campus was absolutely deserted: every one either went home, or are working hard finishing their final papers or studying for exams.
And my new job was in full steam. A little task here, another there, and before I realized the day was over and I hadn’t found the time to have a sip of water, or to visit the bathroom. It didn’t feel like work, because it was all so new and exciting. But once evening came I realized how tired I was. Good tired.
Changing jobs every so often is good for the soul, especially when the jobs are different in nature. Academic work is all very interesting, but it lacks that sense of immediate causality. My summer job is to provide accommodation. It may seem a lot of busy work for something so simple. But at the end of the day I can say “this many people have a bed to sleep tonight, because of me”. Immediate causality: I see the cause, the effect, feels good, life goes on. That’s more than I can say of academic work most days.
But it is good to be able to alternate between both, in the same way that it is good to be able to alternate between feet to walk. Walking when you’re missing a leg involves tremendous effort, and I admire people who can do it. But to be able to walk with both is a privilege. A real privilege.
