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Gabfest Reads is a monthly series from the hosts of Slate’s Political Gabfest podcast. Recently, John Dickerson talked with Father James Martin about his new book, Work in Progress: Confessions of a Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker, Bank Teller, Corporate Tool, and Priest. During part of their discussion, they explored how Martin’s early jobs taught him humility and empathy, why his LGBTQ Catholic ministry has drawn intense opposition, and what the Gospels actually say about immigration and welcoming strangers.

This partial transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.

John Dickerson: So let’s talk about the turn that your life took from being what you say is ‘a corporate tool.’ It’s not going perfectly. And then you come home one night and what happens? Give us the sense of where you were in terms of your job and you were on your way to being rich, the thing that you had started out at age 15 wanting to be.

Father James Martin:… So I worked at General Electric’s Finance and Accounting division in New York City for three years. And then I moved to GE Capital, which was their financial services arm, which was really booming at the time in the mid-’80s. So I moved there in 1985. I took a job in human resources and I thought that would be a little more congenial, but gradually I started to realize I’m in the wrong place. And business is a real vocation for a lot of people. Many of my friends, believe it or not, they worked in GE for their whole lives. A lot of them just retired a couple of years ago, and they contributed to the common good. GE made great things, medical systems and light bulbs and all that kind of stuff, but it wasn’t for me.

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And I found myself getting more and more stressed, more and more miserable, and really thinking, what am I doing here? And there were occasions that I witnessed as an HR person of really crass and cruel behavior. Can I share one of them?

John Dickerson: Yeah.Father James Martin: This was a defining moment for me. Very brief, I’ll make a long complicated story shorter. I was in HR, I was 25, 26. I’m a young guy still, but as you know, their HR departments are pretty small. So you have these young people going to these executives saying, “You can do this and not do that,” and whatnot.

So there was a manager who wanted to fire somebody or bounce them as we used to say. And we had just given this guy an incentive award. So in other words, we had just given him, I think, a trip. So he had just gotten this great job performance review. In any event, this guy said, “I don’t care. I’m firing him.” So my manager said, “Go and talk to this manager,” who was way above me, “and tell him, ‘You can’t do that. You can’t fire someone without cause and you just can’t bounce somebody.’”

And he said, “I don’t care.” And I said, “Well, this guy had an incentive award, and…” “I don’t care. I want him out.” I can see him standing. He was taller than I was. And I said, “Well, he has a family for Pete’s sake.” So I said, “Have some compassion.” And he said, “F compassion.” Not ironically. And I remember thinking, “oh my gosh, that someone could say that with a straight face? What am I doing here?” So that got me thinking about leaving.

And then as I say in the book, I came home and turned on the TV and saw a documentary about Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, and monastic life and the priesthood. It came at the right time. So I always say my life was changed by TV. There you go.

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