The Major

9 to 5? I think not.

I often see people refer to work hours as “9 to 5”. Who the hell works these hours? Almost everyone gets a lunch break, usually one hour. And you still have to work 8 hours, so shouldn’t we say something like “8 to 5” or “9 to 6” as the standard work hours?

Damn old sayings…sometimes they stick around even though they don’t make sense anymore. Either that or I am missing something.

Work Requirements

I’ve started to realize that I am going to be a picky bastard when it comes to working. I already have a short list of requirements, and the list will get longer in the next few years:

current requirements:

• I will not work in food service or retail. I loved my first job working at George’s Restaurant, but I am past that phase now. I don’t think this is a very hard requirement…but it still is one.
• I will not sell things. I think I decided this one when I was in elementary school and they had you sell those things out of the catalogs. I spent so many hours selling, and all I got was this god damned plastic thing that you twirl around. I never did that catalog shit ever again. And then I worked at Ruby Tuesdays for a month once. It was only a month because I hated the customers, and I hated selling their stupid appetizers and margaritas.
• I will not work core business hours every single week. This makes it impossible to get errands done, and more importantly, it makes it impossible for me to do volunteering. So I’d rather bear the stress of working night shift, for now, than to work business hours every week.
• I will not commute more than 30 minutes each way, with a little bit of leeway if I get to take public transportation. My last job was at least one hour and fifteen minutes each way.

future requirements:

• I will not be on-call. When I am not working…I am not working, damn it. I currently have to do on-call once every three weeks (soon to be once every four weeks). We get paid enough for the on-call that I am going to buy EVDO (cell phone Internet) access just so I don’t have to be tied to my apartment for a week straight.
• I will not work night shift. I currently work night shift, and I am starting to hate it. My sleep sucks during the week. I feel unmotivated until about 7am. Not to mention how annoying it is on my social life to have to leave at 12:30am every night.
• Within a few years, I just won’t be caught making a living doing something I don’t care about. This will probably mean that I will have to be my own boss, which is fine with me. Of course, this is all easier said than done.

So the point of all this is, I would gladly trade a better salary for having all of these requirements fulfilled. Hopefully within a few years I will be able to accomplish all of these things.