I love my job.
Don’t get me wrong, some blue-collar jobs are great. I was a janitor for 4 and a half years and I loved probably four of them. It’s incredibly gratifying to work with your hands and immediately see results. I left that job due to a sense of typical entitlement: I’m about to get a college degree; I can do better than this.
I am currently a Geometry teacher at an arts school and I have found a medium where I’m able to interact with students, enlighten supple minds, and quip fun facts about Latin words and Religion. No job is perfect, but while I may voice my concerns to my wife and close friends, I am still bursting with gratitude that I have a job that doesn’t suck. It’s also in a field that I actually like. I’ve seen dozens of aging Baby Boomers working the Returns counter at Wal-Mart and none of them are too happy to be doing it.
To back up my claim that the recession is good for our kids: here are a few direct quotes from the internet:
Play unnoticeably on your browser at work!
Today, my co-workers decided to play a round of “Who can piss off the boss the most?”. I didn’t play, but I still won. FML
Check out this video! NSFW!
There are 37 million Google results for “kill time at work”, including this article on ehow.com, which gives “productive” ways to piddle away the weekday. I had to look up NSFW a few weeks ago, while I was reading an article online (It was during my break period; don’t judge me).
In the movie Office Space, Jennifer Aniston laments “Everybody hates their job”. Unfortunately, this sentiment is a poor sampling of Humanity and an even poorer sampling of the United States. An individual can make $9 an hour testing video games; our country is awesome.
Enter the recession.
Suddenly, those who hated their jobs are wishing they had it back. Suddenly, $40,000 a year isn’t a right, it’s a privilege, and you may have to actually… *sigh*… apply yourself and earn the paycheck. Suddenly, if you hate your job, you aren’t “everybody”, you’re an ungrateful douche, and probably a little arrogant also.
Hence, the growing “Get a College Degree or Live with your Parents Forever” movement gains more steam as even Wal-Mart employees have 12 years experience in retail and a law degree.
Now, the entitled American teenager who plans to work as a receptionist with his/her high school degree must get some experience, get a degree in Administration, and most likely have a skill set.
You know, other than texting and hiding gin in an Arrowhead bottle.
Further, college students who have accepted allowances from their parents during college in the past must now compete for Starbucks and Albertson’s jobs and… go to work often. I recall sleeping through at least two shifts at Subway when I was in college, in addition to arriving late and leaving early. If I were to do that now, there would be a dozen other collegiates looking to earn $7.50 an hour to sling pressed turkey. How else will we afford EasyMac?
Yup. It appears that the United States will be joining the rest of the world in budgeting, saving money, reducing debt, raising productivity, and planning ahead.
Except that 67% of us are obese while we do it. Happy Hanukkah.