Smells Like Employee Spirit

The end of another work week, and what have we learned?

Personally, I’ve learned that if we continue to fling ourselves out of bed when the alarm goes off we're going to get what we’ve got coming. Eventually, though, we arrive at Friday, the day where the light at the end of the tunnel is at its brightest.

Another precious weekend has arrived.

I wonder what will happen?

Welcome to Fridays, ladies and gentlemen, the day I seek the advice of my iPod, known universally as the Knower of All Things Knowable. Set to “shuffle”, the tunes played on my morning’s commute are, in some way, connected to what we can expect over the weekend.

It’s true!

Let’s listen:

Never Been to Spain by Three Dog Night
Big Bottom by Hayseed Dixie
Tightrope by Janelle Monae
Black Swan by Thom Yorke
Everybody’s Everything by Santana
A Listening Man by A Band of Bees
Pala Tute by Gogol Bordello *

See that? I think that’s pretty clear, don’t you?

Not everything is clear, however.

Ashley, for instance, cannot get over how unfair her job is. Yesterday was the second time in a month that she’d been asked to pick up a lunch for the VP she supports.

“Do you believe this?” she asks me, waving a bagged lunch toward my desk.

I nod in my most commiserating fashion. I was an executive assistant for over a dozen years. Not only do I believe this, but I find it hilarious.

“He can just get his own lunch. I mean, seriously. Really? Seriously. I mean, why am I picking up his lunch? I went out for lunch an hour ago and no one offered to pick it up for me.”

“You should get an assistant.”

“This is not why I went to college.”

I smile. “Why did you go to college, anyway?”

She frowns at me. “Everyone goes to college.”

I shake my head. “Not everyone.”

“Well you’d have to be stupid,” she declares haughtily. “All the best jobs go to college graduates.”

“Yes,” I murmur, “clearly.”

She looks at me. Was that a cut? I smile at her, and she decides that the middle-aged lady still wearing pantyhose with skirts – pantyhose! Did you ever?! – did not just make fun of her.

Silly girl.

“Look,” I say. “You work yourself up too much over this stuff. Picking up his lunch is not that big a deal. There are some bosses who ask that you pick up their dry cleaning, their dogs, make arrangements for their kid’s graduation parties.”

She appears shocked. “Well I wouldn’t do it.”

“You would if you wanted to get paid.”

Now it’s her turn to shake her head. “If everyone refused to do it, they’d get used to it and just do it themselves. Their sense of entitlement is oppressive.”

Oh, she’s so young.

I want to poke her with a stick.

“I’ve gotta run,” she breathes. “I’m meeting a friend at Starbucks.”

“I thought you already took your lunch.”

She tosses her hair. “I deserve a break.”

“Of course,” I say.


* When I picture us dancing, it's to something like this. We'll slam our drinks (Slainte! Skol! Here's mud in yer eye!) and head to the dance floor, our shoes hidden under the table...