A few years ago, I helped an Afghan refugee find a job.
He spoke very little English, but he had some plumbing experience from Afghanistan. I took him to an interview at a plumbing company in my town. I worried they wouldn’t hire him because of his poor language skills and lack of job experience in America. I was wrong.
Erich Bridges
The gist of the manager’s response: “Hey, we need plumbers, bigtime. If he’ll show up on time — and not be on drugs — we’ll not only give him a job, we’ll send him to master plumber school at our expense.” He hired my friend on the spot.
I guess that’s a sad commentary on the dependability of American workers these days, but it illustrates why so many U.S. employers love hard-working immigrants.
It also illustrates a larger truth: Showing up is half the battle in life.
How hard is showing up? Apparently it’s beyond the capability of many folks who lack basic motivation, need their beauty rest — or partied a little too hard the night before.
Columnist Froma Harrop recently complained about the mentality behind a piece in The Wall Street Journal titled “Is It Ever OK to Have an 8 a.m. Meeting?” Harrop contended the article “contained two dubious assumptions: (1) That 8 a.m. is very early in the morning, and (2) employees have a right to rebel against a company policy that interferes with drop-off time for kids at school — or forces them to alter their workout schedules. One can sympathize with a parent’s desire for predictable schedules. But if they can’t be flexible enough to occasionally show up at work an hour early, they may need a different employer.”
Besides, she groused, “What made 8 a.m. such an outrageously early hour? To a lot of working Americans, 8 a.m. is practically lunchtime. Firefighters, police, nurses and Emergency Room doctors work the entire night (some are lucky if they get home by 8 a.m.) In rural America, the cows have already been milked by 6 a.m. About 16% of full-time employees work on ‘alternative shifts,’ according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
Heck, in the post-COVID world, you don’t even have to leave the house for the 8 a.m. meeting if it’s on Zoom.
OK, Boomer, I can hear some Gen Z workers saying as they roll their eyes. Times have changed. Modern companies need to adjust to the needs of employees, not the other way around, if they want job loyalty. I understand, but sometimes you have to suck it up and do what you have to do.
“Showing up isn’t just the key to work; it’s the key to friendship.”
Former work colleagues will smile at my hypocrisy in this regard, since I was chronically late for the entire 35 years of my main career gig, even after we went to more flexible hours. All I can say is: OK, I’m a hypocrite. But Harrop is right.
I’m still frequently late to appointments, Sunday school, dates with friends. But in my own defense, I finally got with the work program in early retirement, when I drove a school bus for three years. You can’t be late when little kids are waiting outside in the cold for you at 7:30 a.m.
Harrop: “I once had an editing job that started at 6 a.m. As part of my interview, the boss sternly asked me, ‘You are going to be here at 6 a.m., right?’ I answered, ‘Yes, that’s the job’ and was hired. … I didn’t like having to haul out of bed at 4:30 a.m. to dress and catch a downtown bus to the office. But navigating pre-dawn Manhattan now remains one of my most fabulous dreamscapes.”
Showing up isn’t just the key to work; it’s the key to friendship. When a friend needs you, really needs you, will you be there?
And what if that friend is the Lord? At his hour of deepest anguish, Jesus found his disciples sleeping in the Garden of Gethsemane. He said to Peter, “Could you not stay awake with me one hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
If 8 a.m. seems brutal, consider this: Trappist monks still rise daily at 3 a.m. for matins, their first office for singing the psalms and praying for the world. They’ve been doing it for about 15 centuries.
Erich Bridges, a Baptist journalist for more than 40 years, has covered international stories and trends in many countries. He lives in Richmond, Va.