HAPPINESS, UNHAPPINESS, WORK, CAREERS AND DRINKING

AN ESSAY

When I practiced law, I learned the real meaning of the word “unhappiness.” I have garbled memories about my months in practice. Impressions flitter back to me without warning. No matter how they reappear, they put a bitter taste in my mouth. They confirm to me that I made the right decision to abandon the legal profession. They remind me just how awful I felt every day in a law office.

Before I practiced law, I never thought much about the concepts “happiness” and “unhappiness.” In my young mind, happiness was uncomplicated; it simply meant that you generally “felt good” in your circumstances and that “nothing was wrong.” Applying that definition, “unhappiness,” too, was easy to understand. It was just the “opposite of feeling good.” “Unhappiness” depended on “happiness.” If I knew one, I could abstractly imagine the other. I never considered that “unhappiness” could have an independent meaning.

It does. The mere fact that the word “unhappiness” contains the word “happiness” does not mean that “unhappiness” depends on “happiness.” To the contrary, “unhappiness” is a unique, pervasive, all-consuming feeling of malaise that darkens your entire outlook on life. It is not merely the absence of happiness; it is much more. It is a poisonous, enervating, hopeless mental condition. When you are unhappy, life appears bleak and pointless. Days pass slowly, even torturously. You just want to lie down and go to sleep. You expect bad news at every turn. When you are unhappy, you do not think to yourself: “I am not happy.” You think: “I am unhappy; and unhappiness has nothing to do with happiness.”

Practicing law made me unhappy. I could not bear to get up in the morning. I would lie in bed and pray that the minutes on the clock would not pass. From the moment I walked into the office, difficulties arose. My supervisor would yell at me for failing to make a phone call or fax something. She would reject my explanations with vague advice, such as: “You need to do better, remember more and move faster.” Of course, she never told me how to make people answer the phone or return calls. Nor could she tell me how to make the U.S. Mail move more quickly. Whenever I mustered the effort to fulfill her requests, she had a fresh rebuke for me. She called me names and told me she would dock my pay if I kept “fucking things up.” I tried to emphasize that no one had trained me. She told me to train myself by reading a 900-page “best practices manual.”

I felt disillusioned. I entered law practice after a very successful law school career. I thought my academic success would carry over into practice. It did not. Whenever I talked about legal theory, I was told to be quiet and do “case management” instead. That meant making phone calls and setting up appointments with doctors and engineers. Law had nothing to do with my practice. It was an elaborate horse-trading game that happened to revolve around a courthouse. All the while, intimidating people besieged me from all sides. My own supervisor told me I was incompetent. My adversaries called our lawsuits “baseless, stupid and worthy of sanction.” I even made judges angry because my supervisor instructed me to file idiotic motions in court. In short, I was castigated for following orders as often I was for failing to follow them. It was classic Catch-22 material.

My life degenerated into pure negativity. Nothing ever felt right. No matter what I did, I expected to be insulted, censured or criticized. I never received even one encouraging word from anyone. I remember losing interest in everything, even things I really liked. My libido vanished. Lawyers in my firm sympathized with me. But they, too, endured the same hardships I did; they had little time to worry about me.

And I could not escape. I stayed in the office for 11 hours or more for six days a week. I had no vacation time. I received cell phone calls before and after I left the office. The bad news and mean-spirited criticism never ended. Six months into my law practice experience, goodness seemed to have evaporated from my existence. It had become one grim, emasculating failure after another with no end in sight. My boss even reneged on a promise to increase my salary after six months, explaining: “You haven’t earned it yet.”

That’s when I learned what “unhappiness” really meant. I quit. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Since then, life has dealt me more tough cards. But at least I do not face ridicule, scorn and criticism every hour. I happier now than I was when I practiced law. In any event, I know I am not “unhappy” anymore.

Could anyone be happy in such circumstances? I remember something my supervisor said to me one Friday evening. It was about 6 PM. I was working on something that had to be done on Monday; there was still a long way to go. I knew I was going to be back in the office on Saturday, but I wanted to knock some work out before the weekend. Everyone else had gone home except my supervisor. She wanted to leave, too. So she came into my office and said: “Would you wrap it up? You’re cutting into my drinking time.”

I will never forget that. It made me seriously think about life, careers, happiness and success. Here was a successful law firm manager who divided life between “work time,” namely, Monday morning through Friday afternoon, and “drinking time,” namely, Friday afternoon through Sunday evening. When she said “I was cutting into her drinking time,” she implied that she drank at any moment she wasn’t working. For her, life was binary: Working and drinking. She must have liked drinking, because she did not like the fact that I was keeping her at work during her drinking time. If she had liked working, she would not have minded staying at work for a few more hours. But she was upset because I was encroaching on “her time,” and in “her time,” she liked drinking.

I am sure this is a common sentiment. But what does it really say about happiness and success in America? People are so proud of their jobs, especially people—like my supervisor—who achieve prominence and wealth. Yet despite this pride, they always yearn for days off so they can go get drunk. People say they love their work. But if they would prefer drinking to work, are they really being honest with themselves? Sigmund Freud wrote that intoxication is the “purest, most effective method” by which to ward off unhappiness. Civilization and its Discontents, S. 44 (Fischer Verlag, 10th Ed. 2007). Drinking “drowns cares.” If my supervisor loved drinking, she must have had “cares” she wanted to “drown.” This showed me that, beneath the collected exterior, she was somehow unhappy, too. She may not have been abjectly unhappy, but she must have been unhappy enough to want to drink as soon as she got home on Friday night. My unhappiness sprang both from my ill treatment and my disillusionment with a profession that cared nothing for the principles I struggled so long to master. My supervisor’s unhappiness came from some other source. I do not know what made her unhappy. She was powerful and had much more money than I did. She commanded people around the office and owned three apartments. Yet she was upset with me because I delayed her weekly rendezvous with the bottle.

Can we ever really find happiness in employment? It seems that every working person “lives for the weekend.” I know I do whenever I work a “traditional job.” I do not delude myself by saying “I love my job.” I do not like being a servant. I do not like sacrificing my time for a few dollars. Sure, in many cases it is necessary to sacrifice time for money. But that does not mean I like it. That is why I meticulously count the days toward Friday. During the week, a part of my mind always resents the idea that I am stuck doing someone else’s bidding for a shekel or two. Friday, however, represents a liberation from service. Working people divide their mental lives between weekdays and weekends. Weekdays are boring, stressful and unsatisfying. Weekends are exciting, free and fun-filled. The human brain does not like stress, obligation and constraint. Yet it loves freedom and fun. If it came between weekdays and weekends—and if money were not an issue—everyone would choose the weekend: Who would willingly face stress and obligation if there were no compensation for the pain? That is just the way our minds work. It is easier to be happy when you do not face stress, ridicule and failure. Even if you do not face extreme pressure at work, you still have to show up and sit in one place for over eight hours a day. Your brain would much rather be doing other things during that time, like drinking, sunbathing, shopping or surfing. That’s just the way we are, no matter how much guilt-ridden social programming we’ve absorbed to the contrary. We are trained to say “we love to work at traditional jobs.” But this is self-delusion.

Ironically, traditional jobs tend strongly to induce unhappiness. They consume time, leaving only limited opportunities for personal satisfactions. The fact that so many people—even wildly successful people—yearn to drink on Friday night is compelling evidence that people would “rather not be working” if they had the choice. More to the point, the persistent mental distinction between “workday drab” and “weekend fun” vibrantly illustrates that employment makes people unhappy. Workdays are “unhappy time” and weekends are “happy time.” It is childishly simple, yet accurate. “Weekend fun” makes us “happy.” “Weekday drab” runs us down, then thirst for “fun.” Without sufficient “fun” in our lives, we are not “happy.” We may not be truly “unhappy,” but we set ourselves up for unhappiness.

All this makes me wonder whether our entire social program even cares whether people achieve happiness. We learn to work at traditional jobs. We hear rhetoric about it all the time. It is “good” to have a stable job. It is “good” to know your place in the workplace hierarchy. It is “good” to spend your best years serving some company’s economic interests. And it is “good” to make money in the process. We hear that it is important to “be happy.” But how can we be happy if we spend 72% of our lives (ie, 5 days from every 7) wishing it were the weekend? Is it “good” to be happy only 28% of the time? Against this background, it almost seems revolutionary to want happiness 100% of the time. No offense to office workers, but if you say you are “100% happy” at your job copying papers, answering phones, staring at spreadsheets, delivering coffee and cataloging documents, I don’t believe you. I know that every Wednesday morning you secretly say to yourself: “Only two more days to go….only two more days to go.”

Happiness should not be a revolutionary sentiment. I made it my goal in life. I have experienced unhappiness. It is deeply unsettling. It makes you doubt life altogether. It makes you just want to give up. Still, avoiding unhappiness is more difficult than it seems. In our society, we learn to serve. We learn to spend our time to benefit others in order to win some monetary reward. Only a few have the freedom to spend their time as they please. But happiness lies in the power to say: “I will do what I want to do.” On weekends, working people say: “I will do what I want to do,” and they do what they want. On weekdays, they say: “I must” and they do not do what they want to do.

This is not a good recipe for happiness. Yet this is the program we’ve received from day one. When we sit in an office dreaming about the weekend, we understand just how little time we have to be happy in this world. Freud put it best when he said: “Our chances for happiness are already limited by our constitution as living organisms. But it is much less difficult to experience unhappiness.” Civilization and its Discontents, S. 43 (my translation) (Fischer Verlag, 10th ed. 2007).

When we divide our time between “work days” and “drinking days,” we obviously don’t like the work days as much as the drinking days. Yet we work much more often than we drink. Where does that leave us? Or do we drink because we work? If we do, what does that say about work? Should we defend it so proudly?

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF EMPLOYED PERSONS WHO DEMAND PAID TIME TO GET DRUNK ON TUESDAY MORNINGS

POLITICAL PARTIES FOR A CHANGING WORLD

By : Mr. G. Horace Bierbauch, B.A., Office Administrator & Party Advocate; Record Holder, Michigan State Brewers’ Chalice Upside-Down Beer-Hose Competition.

Life is difficult for American workers. For two centuries now, workers have propelled our Nation to incredible success. We know how to get our jobs done. We show up every Monday morning and work every day straight until Friday afternoon. We even show up on the weekend if we need to. When we are not working, we try to take our minds off work with beer, ale, wine, spirits, shots and tequila. We need alcoholic interludes every weekend to keep focused on our work during the week. We work long weeks. Although we love our jobs and our tasks, we are tired. Put simply, weekends are not enough. We need more alcoholic interludes during the week.

Generally speaking, we never see midday light. We arrive at our offices in the morning, when the sunlight slants from the east, and we leave in the afternoon, when the sunlight slants from the west. Sometimes it is completely dark when we leave. Sometimes it is completely dark when we arrive; it depends on the season and how long we stay at work. But the bottom line is that we never enjoy ourselves on weekdays while the sun shines brightest. During those hours, we are dedicated to our jobs. During the brightness of day, our minds fixate wholly on our duties. If we find ourselves outside the office at midday, we feel that something is terribly wrong. On weekdays, the light tells us that we should be working, not enjoying ourselves.

Yet we cannot work effectively without enjoying ourselves at least a little bit. On weekends, we feel comfortable outside the office in daylight. We feel comfortable drinking under the midday sun for hours on end. Yet in those circumstances, we are far from work. We no longer dress in pressed suits, ties and slacks. We dress in shorts, flip-flops, sunglasses and T-shirts. We are not in copy centers or cubicles. We are on beaches, at barbeques, street parties, fairs, dance halls, wine bars, in bed or sitting on comfortable couches doing what we wish from moment to moment. Weekends rejuvenate us. But they constitute only 28% of the week. For the remaining 72% of the week—a very large majority—we find ourselves contending with deadlines, struggling to eat within a 45-minute break, typing brainless memos, avoiding irate bosses and attending sleep-inducing sales meetings. These times wear on us. Until Friday, we have no respite. During our work weeks, we often dream about our weekends. We wish we were outside in the midday sun drinking and walking in flip-flops. But here we are instead: Another day typing data into a spreadsheet in a button-down shirt for $15 an hour plus a few basic benefits and an air-conditioned office. Put simply, we are tired.

We need a midweek break. We, The National Association of Employed Persons Who Demand Paid Time to Get Drunk on Tuesday Mornings, believe that rested, relaxed workers are good workers. Alcohol helps us rest and relax. To that extent, we demand that our employers give us three hours every Tuesday to kick back, crack open beers and get utterly hammered at the office. We enjoy our jobs. We respect our employers. We just need a little time for ourselves while fulfilling employer objectives. Our weeks would be much more tolerable if we knew that we did not have to wait until Friday at 5 to start enjoying life. If we knew on Monday that on Tuesday we would have a whole morning to chat with our coworkers, down martinis, socialize, play drinking games, throw darts and eat free finger foods, the entire week would seem so much more bearable.

Traditionally, Tuesday mornings breed hopelessness in American workers. Unlike Wednesday mornings—the so-called “hump morning”—Tuesday falls into the dreaded “early week” category. As on Monday, Friday remains a distant dream on Tuesday. Workers must work incessantly for three more full days before even thinking about drinking, dancing, carousing and watching live sportscasts with friends. If things go poorly on Monday, Tuesday adds insult to injury. On a bad Tuesday, the worker can expect no end to the misery for days. This engenders hopeless despair, empty panic and dejection. By contrast, bad Thursday afternoons and bad Fridays impart some consolation: While things may be bad at those times, the worker knows that the end is near. That enables him or her to quietly bear workplace adversity in the knowledge that soon he or she will have 48 hours to drink and watch television as much as he or she wishes. Professionals may not have this luxury. Truly great employees work 7 days a week. But every American worker—whether a mail clerk or a senator—needs time for alcohol and escape. In this country, we work hard and we drink hard. That is just how we operate. It is hard to imagine how we would cope without alcohol.

We believe that a Tuesday morning alcohol break will invigorate employees all over America. Great companies understand that employees work best when their morale is high. Compensated beer parties at the office will raise morale, leading to more vigorous performance. Additionally, great companies understand that employees work best as a team. Allowing employees to get thoroughly bombed at the office will eliminate inhibitions between coworkers, resulting in increased team spirit, group ethics and camaraderie. Few things unite people more than alcohol. And the best companies effectively unite people to fulfill company goals. For that reason, midweek drinking sessions will boost company performance. When workers are happy, they work harder. When workers work harder, companies benefit. When companies benefit, the economy improves. When the economy improves, America prospers. In that sense, allowing workers to get plastered on Tuesday mornings will help America prosper. In dark economic times like these, we can think of no better way to get America rolling again.

Detractors claim that allowing workers to drink during work hours will harm company business. These critics note that intoxicated people cannot effectively answer phones, fill in order sheets, process documents, send mail or render advice to customers. We disagree. These critics fail to understand that most employment tasks at a modern American office do not require total sobriety. Making copies, collating papers, delivering mail, welcoming visitors, punching time clocks and writing letters can be accomplished whether dead drunk or completely sober. Furthermore, there is no substance to the argument that drunk people cannot effectively make phone calls or send written messages. We urge our critics to visit any local bar on a Saturday night. There, they will see that anyone—even unemployed people—can effectively engage in telephonic communication, send text messages and render cogent advice (ie, “It would be great if we, like, hooked up later at my place,” etc.) while irretrievably intoxicated. In short, allowing employees to get drunk at the office on Tuesday mornings will not affect everyday business tasks. In fact, drunk workers may actually perform their tasks with greater care than they would when sober, morose and depressed.

Tuesday morning beer bashes will solve many problems. Happy workers are better workers. Our critics fundamentally fail to understand this, even if happy workers slur their words, fall over furniture, grope coworkers, dump beer on the floor or inappropriately mimic sexual maneuvers while crunk-dancing with deputy supervisors. Alcohol does not substantially affect most office work-related duties. And more importantly, allowing workers an “escape” on Tuesdays will offer them a much-needed second-day break during interminable work weeks. Depressed workers help no one. They do not produce. They are not happy. They have nothing to look forward to. But Tuesday morning alcohol breaks will give even the gloomiest employees something to treasure at work. It will break their desperation and give them a reason to enjoy coming to the office. Again, happy workers are better workers. Happy workers are more loyal and more productive. What company wants moribund, pasty-faced, sad, depressive workers who unenthusiastically plod through company tasks for five days straight? Any reasonable employer would much rather have loyal, enthusiastic, dedicated employees who are happy to be at the office. An alcohol party on Tuesday mornings will make employees happy. That is why we demand time to get drunk at work on Tuesday mornings—it is in everyone’s interest.

We, The National Association of Employed Persons Who Demand Paid Time to Get Drunk on Tuesday Mornings, want America to prosper. Prosperity in America depends on happy, motivated, dedicated and loyal employees. The five-day work week is outdated. Workers need more than two days per week to drink and be happy. For that reason, we insist that workers receive a much-needed, work-related alcoholic interlude on Tuesday mornings. If workers have something to look forward to early each week, they will be more dedicated, more loyal and more productive all week long. They will associate work with “happy times.” And it is always better to have a smiling employee than a sad one.

When employees are happy, America wins. We can save our economy from ruin by making American workers happy to do their jobs. All it takes is a little time each week—and plenty of beer. Do your part for a better economy. Get drunk at work this Tuesday at 9:30 AM.

WEEKENDS ARE FOR COWARDS AND COMMUNISTS

CONSIDERED OPINION

By : Mr. Hezekiah H. Mecklenburg, Managing Director and Policy Theorist, The Labor Institute for Real Service

America faces economic crisis because Americans do not work like they used to. In the past, Americans got up, had breakfast, went to work, had lunch, punched out and went home without complaint or longing. They took their wages home on Friday, saved some money and perhaps drank a milkshake on the weekend. Americans never stopped working. They went to work on Saturday and Sunday if they had too. They understood that their job was their life; and it was important to show they cared about their jobs.

Today, even employed Americans cannot stand their jobs. They grudgingly haul themselves out of bed, sleep during their commutes and spend their office time surfing the internet or reading the newspaper. They only do as much work as necessary to avoid censure or discipline; they no longer care about the employer’s mission. Worse, they feel entitled to time off. Every Friday, employees show up to work and ceaselessly talk about “weekend plans.” They lose all focus. They spend all day looking forward to the two days that they can “take for themselves.” They do not think about sales calls, making copies or delivering boxes to the 34th Floor. They think about what bar they are going to later that night or the girl they want to bring home. These are not work-related thoughts. They are inappropriate. In short, American workers just don’t care—and it shows. And that is why our economy fails.

American workers need to get back to basics. To do this, we must completely rethink employment relationships and workplace conditions in this country. This requires that we instill pride in work, not private life. Work pays the bills, not drinking or bowling. Work sustains a household, not playing video games or watching reality television. Although American employees know that work pays their way in life, they all would much rather drink, play video games or watch reality television than work. You would think that they would rather do something that is necessary for life. But no: They would rather have “time for themselves.” The problem, then, is essentially a mental one. Americans need to reorder their minds to love work, not leisure activities. With motivated workers who love their jobs, our economy will rebound.

Here at the Labor Institute for Real Service, we have a plan to make Americans love their jobs. First, we must make workers want to work. At present, American employees would rather “do what they want,” not work. They work because they have to, not because they want to. This naturally causes mental resistance, because obligations make people feel resentful. How did this happen? Simple: Americans enjoy their weekends too much. For decades, American employees have comfortably assumed that they will not have to work on Saturday and Sunday. This “treat at the end” better enables them to endure hardships during the week. It represents a “light at the end of the tunnel” that provides employees an incentive to carry on with the employer’s mission. Yet in recent years, American employees have begun enjoying their weekends too much. They have so much “fun” during the weekend that it dominates their minds at work. Every Monday, they spend their whole morning chatting about what they did the previous weekend, detracting from employer business. On Tuesdays, they start thinking about what they want to do the following weekend, and on Wednesday, they actually start making plans. By Thursday and Friday, they reach “weekend mode,” and they become so excited about the coming days off that work fades into an afterthought. Put simply, American workers have lost their work ethic because they have guaranteed weekends. We can only restore their desire to work if we remove this fatal distraction from their minds.

Days off are economically dangerous. Not only does the economy lose productivity when people take days off, but days off also give American employees time to cultivate their own interests. They enjoy themselves on the weekend; and that personal joy dominates their minds during the following week. This is unacceptable. American workers must be forced to relish their work, not left alone with their joy. To achieve this, we must abolish weekends. No longer will employees feel entitled to take two days off per week. No longer will they have a temptation to dream about Saturday on Tuesday, or Sunday on Wednesday. Rather, they will keep their minds on customer phone calls, pie charts, graphs, spreadsheets, sales meetings and client videos all week long. It is time to stop the entitlements. Great workers work all the time; they do not wish for Friday. And we need great workers to rescue this economy from the lollygagging clockwatchers who poisoned it in the first place.

Weekends are for communists are cowards. No one ever advanced in this country just working Monday through Friday. Did Henry Ford stop working on his Model T because it was 5:01 on Friday afternoon? No. He kept working no matter what the clock said. He did not look forward to Saturday night beer pong at Billy McGillicuddy’s Pub or hooking up with Susan Collins, the cute girl from the accounting department. He slept two hours, then got back up and went back to work on Saturday morning. His work propelled this country to greatness and it made him rich. We need ethic like that to save this economy, not lazy weekenders. We aim to stop the entitlements. From now on, employees will work ten days straight, then take a half-day off to accomplish personal business and see physicians. There will be no more “Friday fever.” Every employee will have a different day off, averting the danger that arises when the entire office anticipates the coming weekend. Now, employees will look forward to their work, not their weekends. This will prevent employees from feeling joy, and when employees are miserable, they stay at their desks and work.

We work in a new economy. It is no longer 1848. Employees no longer shovel coal into blast furnaces or pick textile fragments from yarn balls on dangerous factory floors. Weekends gave workers in early industry a necessary break from hazardous, labor-intensive tasks. But how can workers complain about their jobs today? Can an insurance adjuster complain about maintaining paper files and a computer graph program? Can a receptionist complain about greeting walk-ins with a smile or serving coffee? Can a waiter complain about jotting down orders on a pad? Can a trader complain about running all over the exchange floor soliciting orders on beef futures? And can a lawyer complain about billing two clients at once while talking to a third on the phone? These are not labor-intensive tasks. Rather, they are straightforward administrative activities that place the employee in no danger at all. To that extent, they can keep working without pause. They do not need time off. It makes no sense to continue entitlements from the Industrial Revolution in an Internet Age economy. Only whiners and do-nothings claim that they need “time off” from a desk job. The time for whining and fantasizing is over. It is time to start working again.

We will overcome today’s economic malaise when we all get back to work. By restoring faith in work, we will make America strong again. To restore faith in work, we will set employees’ minds straight. Although weekends may have been important in workers’ lives, they did more harm than good. They allowed employees to have too much fun. That, in turn, corrupted their minds. Good employees do not experience joy; they loyally advance their employers’ interests. Joy is a personal emotion that derives from personal preference and activity. Yet employment requires that a person put his own preferences aside to serve the employer. In that light, joy and employment are not consistent. While we do not deny that superb employees may feel joy when they win success for their employers, we recognize that this does not often happen. Instead, employees feel joy for personal reasons, unrelated to the employer’s mission. In the new economy, we cannot tolerate workers who dream about the weekend. We need employees who gladly show up every day to work. By eliminating weekends, we can better reach that goal, because weekends distract. This is a mental war for employees’ focus. And we are going to win it.

Our detractors say that weekends give employees time to refresh themselves. According to this logic, a refreshed worker is a more productive worker, and because employers like productivity, they should also like weekends. Our detractors also say that rested workers are more productive workers, so weekends actually boost productivity and aid the economy. We strongly disagree. Experience convinces us that workers do not rest during the weekend. They go out, drink, attend sporting events, sprawl out on beaches to bake in the sun, take their children to Chuck E. Cheese® Restaurants, attend doctors’ appointments, shop, surf online, play video games, go swimming, work out, go to the dentist, attempt to fornicate, visit their parents, argue with loved ones, clean out garages, mow lawns, paint fences, plant vegetable gardens, eat fine meals and sleep until 10 AM every morning. Put simply, employees are very busy on the weekends—doing things they enjoy. This is precisely the problem: By restricting their joy to two days during the week, employees naturally will look forward to those two days during the other five. They do not come to work on Monday “rested;” they come to work on Monday exhausted from having fun. Because they spend all their time thinking about the next weekend, their days off actually hamper productivity. Employees associate their two days off with “good feelings” and their five days working with “bad feelings.” Workers cannot work when they are thinking about what a good time they had last Saturday night at the dance hall. In sum, weekends are bad for productivity. And reduced productivity hurts us all.

Let us take action against lazy weekend cowards. We need more work in this economy, not less. Let us emulate those great Americans who worked their whole lives for a better world. Let us put our money where our mouth is. Americans all say they want jobs. But once they get jobs, all they talk about is the weekend. It is time to stop that trend once and for all. When Americans get jobs, let them take pride in the spirit of employment. Let employees say: “Yes! I am happy to be here. I love this job. How may I best serve you, sir?” not: “I fucking hate you and this job; and it’s only Tuesday morning. I would rather be at home eating waffles than in here collating these friggin’ case studies for $9.75 an hour.” Let them feel joy in service, not in their own pursuits. Work means service. Service means loyalty. Loyalty means thinking about your employer, not yourself. Weekends harm service and loyalty. That is why we must stop them. No longer will employees daydream about bars, concerts and women on Friday night. Now, they will have only their desks and their jobs to look forward to.

Together, let us be a Nation of workers, not leisure-seekers. We’ll see you in the office on Sunday.

THE FRIDAY SPIRIT

Employment does the strangest things to people. People spend their early lives in the United States educating themselves, which in turn allows them to advertise themselves to employers. After some struggles and interviews, they "get their jobs" and spend the rest of their youthful years working. Then they hit middle age and keep working. Finally, they get too old and laid off. After all, they can't work as many hours as a 25-year-old graduate who has a studio apartment, debt and no family obligations. After the lay-off, they do not even bother looking for a job, because nobody hires people over 60.

During their work years, people have a strange relationship with their jobs. They spent their young lives preparing for work, so when they actually begin working, they take pride in the fact that they are fulfilling what they lived to do. This pride manifests itself in many subtle ways, such as talking excitedly about what they do, spending extra time at the office and even wearing their company's logo on leisure clothing after hours. And on a more basic level, people feel good to know that they "are making their own way" by earning a paycheck, paying their mortgages and achieving some measure of economic independence.

But there is a dark side to the employment dream. Despite all the good things people claim they get from their jobs, all too often they head off to work with stony, fixed, downtrodden faces. They trudge down the stairs to the subway, trudge back up the stairs to their offices, muster a laugh or two during the day, quickly eat a bag lunch, pore over some horribly boring papers while trying to look busy, then trudge back to the subway, trudge back home, eat, watch television, then go to bed and hopefully get enough rest to make it through the next, identical day.

On Fridays, however, they have a spring in their step. They cheerfully ride the subway and don't seem to mind the 8 hours at the office as much as they did on all the other days that week. They laugh more and deal with office crises with much more levity than they would have on, say, a Wednesday. On Fridays, there is no need to stress out, because tomorrow you can sleep until 8:30, cook breakfast, sit on the couch without being supervised, walk around your apartment naked, eat when you want, go to the bar to watch college football on Saturdays, then pro football on Sundays, and basically do whatever the hell you want when you want, as long as you didn't make plans to see your parents. This is the "Friday spirit." When people say: "Thank God it's Friday," "At least it's Friday," "I don't care; it's Friday;" "I have the Friday feeling," you know they are in the spirit.

What does the "Friday spirit" tell us about people's attitudes to their jobs? I thought people were proud of their jobs? They say they are, but when they jump for joy at the prospect of getting 48 hours away from their jobs, I question whether they actually believe that they like working. How can they wear company logos on their clothing one day, and happily run out of the same company's office every Friday? If they loved their employers so much, wouldn't they want to spend all their days with them? Apparently not.

I believe that most American workers fool themselves into believing that they like their jobs. They face enormous social and familial pressure to "have a job," and they know they will be at a desk for most of their lives. They know they will be ensconced in an unforgiving business hierarchy serving vice presidents, presidents and managers. They know they will face stress and performance reviews. They might even face dismissal for low output. These are all profoundly unpleasant things, and they are inescapable. Perhaps in an effort to avoid total discouragement at these thoughts, they convince themselves, however facetiously, that they "enjoy what they do." But the charade breaks down each Friday, when they truly feel glee in knowing they do not have to show up to work for the next two days.

Feelings do not lie because they are individual. The "Friday Spirit" is an honest expression about how individual people feel about their lot in life. It stands in perfect contrast to the halfhearted praise that people render unto their jobs for friends and family. Sure, people like having money to pay the bills, but they do not necessarily like the process by which they get it. People work in order to pay the bills. If they don't, they lose their homes. Therefore, people work because they must. Compulsion fosters negative emotions, and that is why people trudge to work on every day but Friday. But on Friday, the clouds lift and working people remember that soon they will be able again to do what they want. For a brief moment, there will be no more compulsion or supervision. From earliest childhood, we always were happiest when we did what we wanted. It expressed our own, unique desires from moment to moment. There were no consequences for failing to meet an external standard. That same childish joy seizes every worker's heart on Friday when he exclaims: "Thank God it's Friday!" In other words: "Thank God I no longer MUST show up at this dump and take demeaning orders for 8 hours; I can sleep, eat and loaf around all I WANT for the next two days."

But the weekend lasts at most two days per week. In today's employment market, many employees do not even get that much time off. There are seven days every week. Two out of seven is 28%. For an employee, that leaves 28% of his days for himself; he gives the remaining 72% to his employer. Is it any wonder that employees trudge to work with stony faces? They give their lives and their time for others, all for a meager "compensation" that enables them to avoid homelessness. They do not often get what they want; they do what they must. Friday represents an escape, a temporary reprieve from a life put on hold. It is only natural that people feel gleeful when it rolls around. And it is only natural that they fall into depression when Sunday night falls.