I’m in the business of happy

I’m not in retail or food services, but somehow I managed to find one of those awesome jobs that still allow you to work the day after Thanksgiving. I have a well-documented, irrational fear of four-day weekends. I’m afraid I’ll learn how to have fun again. That’s not something I’m ready to deal with, so for the time being, I consider myself lucky to be working on days like this, earning money rather than spending it on all the ridiculous black Friday deals. Don’t worry though, the pleasure of waking up at 6 am was not lost on me since I get to do that every day that I go to work.

As the day wore on, I began to notice that not everyone in the office shares my same joy of working on black Friday. They like to bring up statistic like, “over 70% of the work force has today off, but not us.” They complain about how they have nothing to do since about 90% of the clients we work with have today off. After listening to them whine about it all day, I started to see their point.

Then I remembered that the squads of gunman that used to follow us around and force us to work at this job were “Right Sized” about a year ago. If you don’t want to work the hours, unlike last year, this year you can go find another job with hours more to your liking. Also, you got to go home 2 hours earlier than I did and you were slow all day whereas I was drowning in work because my client has been possessed by satan himself and finds no use for things like, food, sleep, spending time with the family, or any other such holiday nonsense. My client lives to make thousands of subtle changes to their orders and communicate them in the most inefficient way possible. So shut your yap.

When did our jobs become a right and not a privilege? Are you not in control of your own life? If you’re not happy, are you unable to do anything about it? When did you become incapable of deciding what you did and did not like and acting accordingly? What unmovable force is preventing you from saying, “I do not find this job to my liking; I think I will go find another one that suits my personality and abilities better.” And most importantly, why can’t I listen to my own advice?