No rush to go back to work

When I was 14, my father, who'd pretty clearly had a few drinks, came home and told me he had great good news.

"I got you a job," he said.

It was a dishwashing job. It paid $1.25 an hour and was in the restaurant attached to the bar where he'd been drinking.

And, 50 years of jobs right in a line, and I'm working right now, writing this column.

Because of this work history, I'm supposed to thunder shamelessly about those Americans who will not go back to work washing dishes until they've wrung the last dollar of unemployment and its current federal sweetener.

"By God," I should say. "These people don't want to work! They'd rather stay home and collect."

Not me. I know enough about work to know that you do it for money because there is no way to live without money. If they could get someone stupid enough to do the job for free, then they would. Take a look at all the self-checkout machines in your local grocery and the robots in the auto plants. Business owners will replace a worker with nearly any kind of machinery, as long as the machinery is cheaper than the worker and isn't going to join a union.

And if you live in a fine house in Florida, not trailer park Florida but Mar-a-Lago Florida, and you live on money you inherited, no one ever tells you to find a job. No one ever tells you you're lazy if you don't get a job driving a truck.

But you, Alyssa the waitress, if you decide you'd rather collect than work, you suddenly become an economic traitor who should be flogged back to the Denny's day shift with a horsewhip. One unearned dollar will turn you into a socialist leech. Funny how free money doesn't turn members of the Walton family into socialists, isn't it?

Yeah, Alyssa, staying home with your kids, getting a tan and raking in that $300 a week in extra government money is the greatest threat to this nation since the mail-in voting.

So, Alyssa, and Shane and Carlos and Frank, and all the rest of you folks grabbing a temporary windfall of government money, keep grabbing. Take every dollar you can get, and all the leisure time you can get. Lay on your couch all day, eating cheese popcorn and watching telenovelas or baseball games.

There will be a job for you when the federal money runs out. They're already raising wages, and screaming for you to get back to your job down at the doughnut shop. Funny, isn't it? They're begging YOU to work. Hey, maybe you are worth something after all.

Enjoy it, because it won't last long. You'll go back to work, and the shifts will get longer, and the breaks will get shorter, and they won't give you enough hours to qualify for the health insurance. Everything will be right again, and America will no longer be in danger because you took nine months off from working retail.

The Romany people, those people we used to call gypsies, have a saying.

"When they feed you, eat," the Romany say. "When they beat you, run away."

So, no, don't go back to work. Not until you have to.

© 2021, Creators