View from the North 40

With Christmas and New Year celebrations behind us, we are now entering the dark days.

Days with long, black nights and the freeze of winter settled into the cold, hard ground. And days upon weeks upon months in which time stretches out before me like an endless frost-heave crack in a sidewalk, like a ragged black rut of the grind and the day-to-day toil of someone who doesn’t have another paid holiday away from work for five months.

Yes, five months of inhumane treatment, caught in this nerd-infested hell-hole until the sweet release of Memorial Day, when I finally get paid not to show up.

These are dark days indeed, my friends.

That paid holiday is so far away I don’t even know how to begin building enough momentum just to start feeling excited.

I thought about taking a day off to give me extra time to rev up my excitement level, but — five months — c’mon, who can sustain any kind of excitement for that long. Besides, I’m not going to take one of my vacation days to help solve this problem. That’s essentially like requiring me to pay to find a solution to a problem that is clearly the responsibility of my bosses, or maybe Congress.

Yes, I have proven that I can go to work while suffering from low morale, but if the office is to function well and the people of this country are to come together in unity, the people “in charge” (often referred to as “they”) need to come to the logical consensus that I am right: It should be a rule, or a law or something binding like a social contract only on paper, that we have one fully paid holiday each month.

And “they” need to figure out the logistics of how to make this happen because when I say we, I mean everyone. Me, my fellow reprobates in the media, you whether you are a reprobate or not, store clerks, the garbage picker-uppers, yoga instructors and other teachers, their students, construction workers, telephone receptionists, telemarketers (especially telemarketers, give it a rest) and, yes, even those folks who operate the chairlift at the ski bowl and cabana boys on the beach.

This mandatory paid day off may be difficult to make reality for some folks, like emergency services people such as medical personnel, ranchers and primary care parents. We, or rather, “they” may have to negotiate some kind of alternate days off or emergency supplies dispensaries, but definitely law enforcement can take the day off.

Just vote in some kind of sub-section to the law that makes mandatory life in prison, or maybe the death penalty or 93 years minimum hand-cleaning porta-potties, for any and all law-breaking during one of the nationwide days off.

Kill or maim someone, steal a loaf of bread, participate in a little insider trading, run a stoplight, sorry, you go bye-bye. I’ve never been death penaltied or seen the inside of a prison, but I’ve seen porta-potties and that right there ought to scare anyone straight.

I urge readers and my fellow Americans to participate in monthly sit-ins. Choose a day each month to show up at your place of employment and treat that day like a day of rest and be totally worthless to make America a better place.

Publisher's note: As Pam's boss, I would be delighted to support her plan of action. It would be a welcome improvement if she were worthless only one day per month.

(Author's note: Woops, didn't think she was paying attention to that. Fun times, fun times at [email protected].)