The handful of you reading this blog (and those of you who bothered to read the tagline) know that I am a “trad dad”. Although I routinely write about traditional Catholicism, today I would like to focus on the “dad” part. Look, if it weren’t for my life as a husband and father, I would not be writing these pages at all; so I think you might indulge me.
My 16 year-old daughter recently started applying for jobs. I know… I’m excited for her but it’s also another sign that they’re growing up and I’m getting old. Vanity aside, I leaned in on this one like I always do for my kids and realized that I would be helping her in many ways. My primary means of supporting her include driving her to interviews (she’s getting her license soon as well) and offering my pearls of wisdom. OK, they’re more like demented dew drops of pseudo-wisdom but you get the point.
Last week, I drove the young lady to a fast food restaurant about 20 minutes from home. She was excited for this one but also naturally nervous as this was her first interview for a paying job. She’s held volunteer positions before so I knew she was up to the task. Nonetheless, she pulled the usual spate of “You know nothing, Daddy” nonsense that many teenagers fall back on. As in, “Should I wear jeans to the interview?” To this I replied, “I wouldn’t.” To this she replied, “ChatGPT said it was totally fine!” In the end, she did not wear jeans. In fact, she looked perfectly professional and pleasantly poised.
She went into that interview hoping to get the job because it’s a California-based burger chain that pays – get this – $17.50 an hour! I was shocked. I know inflation and all that but $17.50 an hour to work a counter at a burger joint?! Did I mention they’re based in the land of fruits and nuts? Regardless, if you can get it, it’s nice work. This interview, it turns out, was only the first of a round of interviews. They interview about 70 people per month for this one location and only hire about 2. Before she went in and I stepped out of my truck to smoke and drink my coffee, I told her the following (from my store of “wisdom”):
“Sweetheart, you’ll be golden. You’re dressed appropriately. You have a solid command of English. Believe it or not, you’re able to follow direction. To top it off, you’ve got a great personality when it comes to interacting with other people. They’d be fools not to hire you. But here’s the thing. Your competition? They’re screen-addicted retarded people who do not understand the need to present themselves in an appropriate way and most of them probably feel that they are owed a job and that the wage is too low. Now get in there and slay, queen!”
She rolled her eyes.
But she went in there and did, in fact, slay. She come out and informed me they wanted her back for the next round the following morning.
I dutifully, woke up the next day and we went through the whole thing all over again except this time I spent an additional thirty minutes helping her select a completely different “professional fit”. That’s her attire, for you boomers.
And this time she emerged with mixed news. Everything went great. They told her how the two people slated to interview right before her hadn’t even shown up. No call, nothing. The person who was waiting at a nearby table to interview after my daughter? He looked like he had tripped in a tackle shop with all the piercings and torn denim. Also his hair didn’t appear to have been washed. In weeks. My daughter was actually mortified that anyone would show up looking like that. The interviewer explained that she had jumped to the top of that list of two people they would hire.
“Any conflicts with a weekly work schedule?” he asked.
“Yes,” said my little girl. “I don’t work on Sundays. It’s the Lord’s Day.”
The man asking the questions sighed and his face dropped.
“Ohhhhhh… I’m really sorry then. That’s our busiest day. Oh well, good luck to you then. We’ll keep your name on file.”
She came out to the truck and told me all this. The thing is, she wasn’t crushed. She basically told me, “They can call me in a month. I’m still not working on Sunday.”
I do not know if many of us fully grasp just how offensive the violation of Sunday is to Our Lord. I didn’t grasp it myself until several years ago. I came to that realization when reading through the prayers for First Friday in my missal. That and taking Our Lord’s name in vane are sins for which we all ought to be making reparation. Obviously, there are valid reasons to conduct commerce on a Sunday. The baby needs milk and I couldn’t get out yesterday…. I’m a law enforcement officer and the public good demands I work on Sunday… You get the point. But crashing a burger joint? Hardly seems worth the cost when you know what it is.
Flash forward one week.
I woke up early to drive the young lady to another interview that had materialized in the meantime. This one? It was a Chick-fil-a. It’s so close to my house I could walk there (granted it’s about a mile and I’d have to cross a busy highway). They don’t pay as much but the pay is not bad at all for a teenager just starting out. And just in case you didn’t know, CFA isn’t open on Sundays because their founder believed that the Lord’s Day should be observed by his employees. Again, we were she was dressed on point. *I am ALWAYS dressed on point.* I’m sure you can see where this is going but I wanted to add one more thing relating to my life over the past few years. I put my career on pause to do something I thought absolutely necessary in homeschooling my kids. As the dad here, I worry sometimes that I didn’t teach them well enough or that I haven’t prepared them for the world properly. I have listened to the derision of others who do not understand how crucial this was. Nor do they understand that I will return to the workforce when it is over and it will be over soon. God gave my family an opportunity to do this and I seized upon it for the protection of my children. I spent far too many years teaching other people’s kids and running those brick and mortar schools to know how awful it is out there. Even the best of them have cracks that allow the potential for so many awful things to come in. My primary job has been to protect them. I haven’t always done the best job but my heart was always in the right place. To watch my kids go boldly into the world like this, seeing with my own eyes how much better they are for what we’ve done together under God’s Providence makes me happy.
And right before we left for this interview I had been feeling a little of the homeschool blues. I mentioned she’s a teen. I’ve run into the frustration many homeschool parents feel dealing with this age group. They kind of like to sleep a lot. Even though work gets done; it does not always get done on my schedule. I was praying my morning prayers when I came across a holy card of Tom VanderWoude that had been given to me by his son. If you do not know his story, do click the link in the preceding sentence. Here was a man who clearly took care of his family, even dying to save the life of his son. “Tom,” I said, “Intercede for me, please. I need to find a way to get my daughter out of bed earlier so we can get work done and she can gain a better sense of discipline and structure.”
I watched my daughter emerge from that restaurant with a smile in her eyes. “They said I’d hear back.”
“I’m sure you did fine,” I said.
In fact she did. One block down the road she got a text welcoming her to the team.
She’s going to be working the opening shift. Mornings. EARLY mornings.
And she couldn’t be more excited.
And I couldn’t be prouder of her.
Harvey Millican's Blog: Musings of a Trad Dad 