Back To The Regular Shift at Work

After our extended consideration of that "storm" that may hit in the fall, let's return to our regular shift at work. With our mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual preparations in place, there's no need to wait around for what may or not happen. Besides, today's work beckons and it requires our full attention.

As for the reference to "regular shift," here's what we mean:

The term "shift" was most common in the days when manufacturing relied on human beings plugging away at what were likely somewhat repetitive tasks each day. A successful manufacturing operation would keep humming 24/7. To do so required "shifts" of workers. It's still going on in limited instances, although most of us likely may not have ever worked shifts; perhaps never even came across shift work.

Besides manufacturing plants, one job where shifts are common is police work. Police departments, among other public service groups like EMS folks, are on 24/7. So to cover those 24 hours, individuals typically work in shifts. For cops, they don't call shifts "shifts." They're called "tours." (Not sure why.) A cop we know currently works the night tour, roughly midnight to early AM. He's worked the other two at various times: morning to afternoon; afternoon to midnight.

I worked in a manufacturing plant early on, part-time when I was in school. I wasn't one of the guys on the shop floor. I worked in the cafeteria. Since the guys worked shifts (and at that time it was basically men who worked in the plant), we had to be available at different parts of the day/night. I've also worked odd hours when I pursued a musical career - also early on. They weren't technically shifts, when I worked a day job as well, it was like working a day shift and a night shift. Aside from this, most of my work has been the basic 9-5 (actually some expanded version of in super-early/leave late, as many of us have experienced).

When I think of working shifts, I think of regular, ordinary work. You never hear of top execs working "shifts." When you think of shifts, you think of workers - ordinary Joe's and Jane's. 

Do you consider yourself just an ordinary worker? Or do prefer to think of some glorified description that elevates your position from the ordinary to something "special"? Whatever you think, though, the fact is most jobs consist of quite ordinary, humdrum tasks that require a fair amount of repetition that can get mind-numbing at times. Yes?

Such tasks used to bore me to death or get me worked up somewhat. I'd think I was wasting time, that I should be spending my time doing challenging stuff that used my higher skills more. You can get pretty frustrated thinking this way. Fortunately, that's in the past. And part of the reason is due to good spiritual reading. Read good spiritual writing about work, about why we work, and about how we should work, and you learn that most if not all of us spend a fair amount of time doing ordinary, humdrum things, some more than others.

So here's something for us guys who get this and are about to engage in our regular shift for this work day. It's taken from comments byPope Pius XI when he proclaimed the heroic virtue of the servant of God, Benildus of the Christian Schools:

…A humble servant of God, whose life consisted only of modesty and silence, entirely commonplace and ordinary. But how uncommon and unordinary is such ordinariness as this! The daily round, always the same, with the same weaknesses, the same troubles, might well be called the ‘terrible daily routine.’ What fortitude then, is needed to resist this terrible, crushing, monotonous, suffocating daily round! We need uncommon virtue to carry out with uncommon fidelity – or rather without that infidelity, negligence, and superficiality which are so common and everyday and ordinary – that mass of common things which fills our daily lives. Holy Church shows herself at her most just and most wise as a teacher of holiness when she exalts these humble lights, so often ignored by those who have been favored by seeing them shining before their very eyes. Extraordinary deeds, important events, great enterprises need only to be seen to awaken the highest instincts of all; but the commonplace, the ordinary, the daily round, with no relief and no splendor about it, has no power to excite or fascinate. And yet it is this which makes up the lives of most people – a life which is ordinarily woven only of common things and daily happenings…How often do extraordinary things arise in the course of a lifetime? They are rare indeed, and woe to us if sanctity were restricted to extraordinary circumstances! What then would the majority of men do? For we must declare the truth: to all without exception comes the call to sanctity!”

There's lots of good stuff here about the value of ordinary, everyday work. We can apply this as well to those not-so-exciting domestic chores as well. For us regular guys who work some form of a regular shift at work, it's encouraging to know that of such stuff saints might be made!