When I was a kid, I often wondered why my father was so happy on Fridays and grew more and more miserable as the sun went down on Sunday. I knew that four lettered words were very bad, but as I got older I found out that there was one four lettered word that was worse the rest of them.....Work!

I always thought that work would be a joyful occasion, comprising of lots of free pizza, happy people running through meadows with daisies in their hair and a pay check that I could buy a house with at the end of the first week. How wrong I was!

I never realized that paying my bills would be almost impossible, even with the overtime. I never realized that the government could just take a wad of my money without asking me if I'd like to contribute to a national taxation institution and I never, ever thought that if I refused to work altogether, I wouldn't be able to eat!

Now I know why my father was miserable five days a week and in that time, he taught me a great number of four lettered words unintentionally. But he never told me that work, would make me unhappy.

I used to think that alarm clocks were novelties until I got my first job. I woke up at six in the morning with a terrible sound screaming in my ears. The next day, I made darned sure that, that thing was turned off altogether. On the third day, I was fired! It felt great not having to work again.

Who ever in their in the world thought of the forty hour work week? I mean, forty hours is a lot of time and a huge chunk out of my life. That means that I have one hundred and twenty eight hours left in the week to do what I want, well not really!

Now let's see...fifty six hours for sleeping...forty for working..sometimes there's around ten hours overtime....five hours for lunch...sometimes ten hours getting to work and back. That's...um...one hundred and twenty one hours a week and I haven't even got started yet!

Taking a closer look at this...I spend one hour a week going to the bathroom..thirty minutes brushing my teeth...two hours showering...five hours waking up in the mornings...who know how many hours eating and three hours trying to go to sleep at night. I also spend five hours a week trying to unwind from work... one hour writing checks for my bills and.....er.....what's left?

....Oh yes.... three hours a week arguing with my wife because I don't have enough money to pay the bills and two hours a week, feeling unhappy about myself because I hate my job.... Not to mention the maintenance on the car, laundry and shopping. Now I think that leaves about twenty hours or so for some real quality time, but who's counting?

Learn more about this author, Jon Coe.
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