The original title for this was going to be "Why I Went to Work Today," which I would have titled it had I written it this past Friday, November 30th.
Alas, I had neither the will nor desire to tap words on keys Friday night after a trying week but, then again, aren't most weeks trying?
Throw in a massive blizzard, power outage, extra goals thrust upon me by my inexperienced boss who often acts as a bull acts in a china shop, some challenges faced by my wife and children that I try to help with or at least be a sympathetic ear for, and I was not ready to write on Friday.
Thus the "Why I Went to Work" title, which could have applied hundreds or perhaps even thousands of other days that I had multiple reasons not to go but did, anyway.
This past Friday was one of those days.
A lesser man or mensch would have burned one of his one hundred and four sick days, especially considering that my millennial boss called in sick on both the Monday and Tuesday following Thanksgiving while feeling less sick than many days per year when I drag my sorry ass in.
The short answer to why I went is that it's what I do. Like the post office motto, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will keep me from going to work and making money to support my family, invest for our futures and give to others whether by choice or being compelled to, as we were today.
Going to work when you are not feeling your best and on almost no sleep and after having a day where your boss was an asshole more than once is no easy thing to do. But I went, and I am glad at having done so.
I redeemed myself several times over on Friday including helping to bail my boss out on a bonehead move that he did. I also had a fantastic lunch with one of my oldest and dearest friends, which is truly priceless.
Oh, and Yes, I did contribute to the further economic development of the community that employs me to do so and pays me a living wage.
There are several schools of thought on this, but I won't beat them to death.
The first one is a wise one, indeed, and would say that if your employer provides twelve sick days per year to all employees and if you have accumulated over a hundred sick days while having cashed out at least twenty over the past few years, why not take one?
That is what they are for and there are no gold stars or financial bonuses given to those of us who do not take sick days.
Honestly, I did not feel too crappy despite having been up half the night and not having had electric due to a massive blizzard that hit our area on Monday.
We were fortunate not to have lost electric in the direct aftermath of the storm like many of our neighbors did; however, our electric utility, Com Ed, did have to turn ours off for a night while they repaired some transformers that service our neighborhood.
Another school of thought is that my time could have been better spent in improving both my mental and physical health for a day and I could have also worked on something to better my family's financial health, like working on creating an e-commerce site that I have been pondering and researching for most of this year, or listing more books on eBay like I have been doing a lot of lately in an effort to cull my growing hoard of books while making a few extra bucks.
A third school of thought is to simply tough it out. Life can be tough. Jobs can be difficult and bosses can be jerks sometimes. It is best to be your own boss, but for those of us who have others for bosses, those others can sometimes be jerk-offs. One of my goals is to become grittier, and I gritted out a day that I would have rather not been there.
Many a working class or lower class household lacks a primary breadwinner who will drag him or herself out of bed no matter what, get dressed and head over to their place of work day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year.
Decade after decade in many cases, including mine. There were many days that I did not want to go in and deal with scumbag criminals all day in my twenties as I served as an Adult Probation Officer, as detailed in my tome, the P.O.
There were many days between the years 2000 and 2005 as I became a county planner and then an Economic Development Director for a crappy town for three years when I did not want to go in.
But I did, just like I did on Friday.
I figured that if my fifteen-year-old daughter could handle all of her challenging courses including an Advanced Placement class that she is taking, her many band responsibilities and her many hours of dancing for the school's competitive dance team, then I could go in too.
I would feel guilty lying around the house feeling like Woe is Me while my fifteen-year-old daughter was working her butt off striving to remain a straight-A student while being one of the best dancers at her large and competitive suburban high school and one of the best trombone players to boot.
Because our electric was shut off late Thursday night and cut her off as she was doing her homework, she woke up at five Friday morning to work on it for two hours before leaving for school. By the way, in our suburban high school, nearly all of our daughter's homework must be done online, and our wi-fi went out along with our electrical outage thus cutting her off and causing her to lose an hour's worth of homework.
In short, I was also inspired to go in by my daughter, who was leaving for school already as I dragged my mentally and physically exhausted self out of bed at seven.
Enough of the explanation. Suffice it to say that I went to work this past Friday even though I really did not want to. It was not the first time that I have done so and it will most definitely not be the last.
I suppose that as the years go by and I inch closer to the age where I can retire on time, FD-ROT style, or Fat FIRE at 55, and if I had already launched the e-commerce site utilizing a play on my name like I would love to while the domain remains available, I would have called in halfheartedly while seething about my boss and would have worked on adding items, writing new ad copy, devising marketing strategies for the site and hopefully filling orders.
I hope to write about doing so in the future, although one does not want to get busted by one's boss by blogging about how you called in sick and then worked on your website all day.
Whatever.
Don't forget that I could be your BFF. The F in the middle stands for Food.
Money and finance is just one of my many interests. Books and food are two others, and I would just as soon blog about those as money.
I've been eating unbelievably this past week, as I often do. There was a chili cook-off at my place of work and I sampled ten types and voted accordingly.
My wife made me grilled cheese sandwiches with three types of cheese, and she is a connoisseur of cheese, being from Wisconsin and spending whatever price the best cheeses are when she does our shopping at Mariano's, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods.
I picked up Jersey Mike's this past Wednesday for my wife and I. #6, Mike's Way, plus pickles and mustard (no mustard for the wife).
I ordered a pesto chicken sandwich for lunch from one of my favorite local restaurants on Monday.
This Friday, I went out to lunch with a long-time dear friend and had a delicious flatbread with barbecued chicken at another local restaurant.
Today, I made a nice omelette for breakfast. For this one, I used red onions, green peppers and feta cheese. It was great, if you like that kind of thing like we do.
Tomorrow, we'll be visiting our son at his college, listening to him play his trumpet in a quartet and will be going to Portillo's afterwards.
I'm sure that the food will continue coming my way. It actually works against our finances since I can assure you that our family spends far more on eating out than we should. Combined, we typically eat out forty or so times per month, or around the American average of 18 per person, since we often eat out in various combinations that do not include all four of us together at the same place and same time.
Here I note that another thing that I did after work on Friday was purchased a saw at Menards because we are compelled to saw the downed branches on our property into maximum ten-foot sections.
I also purchased an Ultimate BLT sandwich at Which Wich for our hard-working and talented daughter and dropped it off for her at her high school between her dance team practice and the basketball double header that she performed in on both the dance team and pep band.
This morning, I stood outside in the pouring freezing rain for over an hour sawing these huge branches into lengths that our city will pick up. I was completely soaked including having inadvertently stepped into a puddle up to my ankles.
Not complaining; just writing what I did. I got so into it and so focused that I did not give a crap that I was completely soaked and freezing cold.
I did what needed to be done, and the branches will be hauled away by someone else next week as I sit in meetings with brokers, investors, developers and business people.
As I have written in many posts, I will be exchanging my energy for theirs, in the form of me doing work that I am compensated about four hundred per day for doing while several men employed by my community will be utilizing their own physical energy by going through the community with a chipper to clear away the thousands of branches and trees that were downed by the blizzard this past Monday.
I'll write a few more relevant posts soon, since this one is a one-off, but I did feel compelled to share with the world why one anonymous (for now) Money Mensch dragged his sorry ass into work this past Friday.
It was not just for the money.
Alas, I had neither the will nor desire to tap words on keys Friday night after a trying week but, then again, aren't most weeks trying?
Throw in a massive blizzard, power outage, extra goals thrust upon me by my inexperienced boss who often acts as a bull acts in a china shop, some challenges faced by my wife and children that I try to help with or at least be a sympathetic ear for, and I was not ready to write on Friday.
Thus the "Why I Went to Work" title, which could have applied hundreds or perhaps even thousands of other days that I had multiple reasons not to go but did, anyway.
This past Friday was one of those days.
A lesser man or mensch would have burned one of his one hundred and four sick days, especially considering that my millennial boss called in sick on both the Monday and Tuesday following Thanksgiving while feeling less sick than many days per year when I drag my sorry ass in.
The short answer to why I went is that it's what I do. Like the post office motto, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will keep me from going to work and making money to support my family, invest for our futures and give to others whether by choice or being compelled to, as we were today.
Going to work when you are not feeling your best and on almost no sleep and after having a day where your boss was an asshole more than once is no easy thing to do. But I went, and I am glad at having done so.
I redeemed myself several times over on Friday including helping to bail my boss out on a bonehead move that he did. I also had a fantastic lunch with one of my oldest and dearest friends, which is truly priceless.
Oh, and Yes, I did contribute to the further economic development of the community that employs me to do so and pays me a living wage.
There are several schools of thought on this, but I won't beat them to death.
The first one is a wise one, indeed, and would say that if your employer provides twelve sick days per year to all employees and if you have accumulated over a hundred sick days while having cashed out at least twenty over the past few years, why not take one?
 |
| They do not give us gold stars for attendance. |
Honestly, I did not feel too crappy despite having been up half the night and not having had electric due to a massive blizzard that hit our area on Monday.
We were fortunate not to have lost electric in the direct aftermath of the storm like many of our neighbors did; however, our electric utility, Com Ed, did have to turn ours off for a night while they repaired some transformers that service our neighborhood.
Another school of thought is that my time could have been better spent in improving both my mental and physical health for a day and I could have also worked on something to better my family's financial health, like working on creating an e-commerce site that I have been pondering and researching for most of this year, or listing more books on eBay like I have been doing a lot of lately in an effort to cull my growing hoard of books while making a few extra bucks.
 |
| I sold 8 books on eBay the past two weeks. |
Many a working class or lower class household lacks a primary breadwinner who will drag him or herself out of bed no matter what, get dressed and head over to their place of work day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year.
Decade after decade in many cases, including mine. There were many days that I did not want to go in and deal with scumbag criminals all day in my twenties as I served as an Adult Probation Officer, as detailed in my tome, the P.O.
There were many days between the years 2000 and 2005 as I became a county planner and then an Economic Development Director for a crappy town for three years when I did not want to go in.
But I did, just like I did on Friday.
I figured that if my fifteen-year-old daughter could handle all of her challenging courses including an Advanced Placement class that she is taking, her many band responsibilities and her many hours of dancing for the school's competitive dance team, then I could go in too.
I would feel guilty lying around the house feeling like Woe is Me while my fifteen-year-old daughter was working her butt off striving to remain a straight-A student while being one of the best dancers at her large and competitive suburban high school and one of the best trombone players to boot.
Because our electric was shut off late Thursday night and cut her off as she was doing her homework, she woke up at five Friday morning to work on it for two hours before leaving for school. By the way, in our suburban high school, nearly all of our daughter's homework must be done online, and our wi-fi went out along with our electrical outage thus cutting her off and causing her to lose an hour's worth of homework.
In short, I was also inspired to go in by my daughter, who was leaving for school already as I dragged my mentally and physically exhausted self out of bed at seven.
Enough of the explanation. Suffice it to say that I went to work this past Friday even though I really did not want to. It was not the first time that I have done so and it will most definitely not be the last.
I suppose that as the years go by and I inch closer to the age where I can retire on time, FD-ROT style, or Fat FIRE at 55, and if I had already launched the e-commerce site utilizing a play on my name like I would love to while the domain remains available, I would have called in halfheartedly while seething about my boss and would have worked on adding items, writing new ad copy, devising marketing strategies for the site and hopefully filling orders.
I hope to write about doing so in the future, although one does not want to get busted by one's boss by blogging about how you called in sick and then worked on your website all day.
Whatever.
⟷
Don't forget that I could be your BFF. The F in the middle stands for Food.
Money and finance is just one of my many interests. Books and food are two others, and I would just as soon blog about those as money.
I've been eating unbelievably this past week, as I often do. There was a chili cook-off at my place of work and I sampled ten types and voted accordingly.
 |
| Seven of the twelve crock pots making chili at my place of work. |
I picked up Jersey Mike's this past Wednesday for my wife and I. #6, Mike's Way, plus pickles and mustard (no mustard for the wife).
I ordered a pesto chicken sandwich for lunch from one of my favorite local restaurants on Monday.
This Friday, I went out to lunch with a long-time dear friend and had a delicious flatbread with barbecued chicken at another local restaurant.
Today, I made a nice omelette for breakfast. For this one, I used red onions, green peppers and feta cheese. It was great, if you like that kind of thing like we do.
Tomorrow, we'll be visiting our son at his college, listening to him play his trumpet in a quartet and will be going to Portillo's afterwards.
I'm sure that the food will continue coming my way. It actually works against our finances since I can assure you that our family spends far more on eating out than we should. Combined, we typically eat out forty or so times per month, or around the American average of 18 per person, since we often eat out in various combinations that do not include all four of us together at the same place and same time.
Here I note that another thing that I did after work on Friday was purchased a saw at Menards because we are compelled to saw the downed branches on our property into maximum ten-foot sections.
I also purchased an Ultimate BLT sandwich at Which Wich for our hard-working and talented daughter and dropped it off for her at her high school between her dance team practice and the basketball double header that she performed in on both the dance team and pep band.
This morning, I stood outside in the pouring freezing rain for over an hour sawing these huge branches into lengths that our city will pick up. I was completely soaked including having inadvertently stepped into a puddle up to my ankles.
Not complaining; just writing what I did. I got so into it and so focused that I did not give a crap that I was completely soaked and freezing cold.
I did what needed to be done, and the branches will be hauled away by someone else next week as I sit in meetings with brokers, investors, developers and business people.
As I have written in many posts, I will be exchanging my energy for theirs, in the form of me doing work that I am compensated about four hundred per day for doing while several men employed by my community will be utilizing their own physical energy by going through the community with a chipper to clear away the thousands of branches and trees that were downed by the blizzard this past Monday.
I'll write a few more relevant posts soon, since this one is a one-off, but I did feel compelled to share with the world why one anonymous (for now) Money Mensch dragged his sorry ass into work this past Friday.
It was not just for the money.
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