On a Monday afternoon, I swung the door open into a Waffle House. To my surprise, I was the only customer. I sat at the bar. Before the waitress approached me, the cook looked over my way and asked, “do you know what you want?” I always know what I want at Waffle House. I ordered my usual All-Star Special with hashbrowns, bacon, and a regular waffle directly from the cook. As he began to work on my order, the waitress brought me a drink, and proceeded to wash some dishes on the opposite side of the counter from where I sat. She was singing happily song after song. A lady walked in, she appeared to be the girlfriend or wife of the worker who was mopping the opposite side of the store. As she departed, he said to her, “see you later, love.”
I said to the waitress, “this is the first time I am the only customer at a Waffle House.” She looked at me with a smile and replied, “welcome to Garden City.” Artificial Intelligence reports when you Google “Waffle House” that the restaurant is casual, not romantic and not upscale. At the close of the year 2024, there were 445 Waffle Houses in the state of Georgia, or about one store per 23,800 Georgia residents. We in the Peach State are quite familiar with highway exits with two locations, so whichever way you turn, you will look up to find the recognizable yellow squares with the large black letters inside.
I was struck by the joy expressed by the waitress that Monday afternoon. “If only everyone were that happy while working,” I thought. Saint Josemaria Escriva noted in his meditation book Furrow that “work is man’s original vocation. It is a blessing from God, and those who consider it a punishment are sadly mistaken (#482).” Through work, every human person imitates God who in the Book of Genesis worked for six days to fashion the universe, and then rested on the seventh. The ability to work is one thing we have in common with God. Saint Josemaria further wrote that “Jesus spent thirty-three years in silence and obscurity; in submission and work (#485).” Jesus was the carpenter’s son, and himself a carpenter. Work is part of being a human person, and even God incarnate did not deem work to be beneath him.
The Polish Cardinal who was a mentor to Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Stefan Wyszyński, wrote that “work is not so much a sad necessity, not only a rescue from hunger and cold, but it is a need for the rational nature of man who comes to know himself fully and expresses himself completely through work (The Spirit of Human Work, Wyszyński). The challenge of modernity is that work has been reduced to tasks, making it difficult for the worker to find a sense of fulfillment that comes from a job well done. Installing a part for eight hours in an assembly line does not bring the same fulfillment as creating a product from scratch, yet as human beings who are called to work, we have the resilient ability to find God’s presence even in the most menial of jobs, because the value of work comes from the subject performing the work, the worker. All work can be a path to holiness, because it is the work of an individual called to holiness by imitating God the creator.
Perhaps the waitress at the Garden City Waffle House is unable to explain the source of her joy, but it was evident to me that the joy came from her performing her job well. Work is not a necessary evil, but rather an invitation to be more like God. Work allows us to grow in holiness in the measure that we imitate God.
Picture from the Creative Commons. See link here.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In