Employee Benefits

Motherhood is full of wonder. Sometimes you sit back and think: "There's my son's necktie and wallet in the laundry chute. Hmmm...that's odd. To me, necktie = dry cleaners and wallet (with driver's license inside)= should be in the pants you wear when you drive!", but maybe that's just me. Or when I say to my daughter: "You don't have to make your bed because it's Friday, but could you just pick up your room a little?" Apparently I emphasized the word "little" too much. Or perhaps, in her mind, "picking up" literally means picking a couple things up off the floor and throwing them over her chair....regardless of whether they were dirty!!!

What am I, an idiot? Wait, don't answer that. I must be. They say insanity is continuing to do something after it stops making sense. Wow, I guess issuing the order: "Clean up the basement" 15 times without it being done is about 13 times past making sense. And still, I show up here every morning, trying once again to make it all work. (Well, I do live here but let's not cloud the facts or stifle the whine.)

If this was a real job in a real company, I would have quit long ago. The constant frustration coupled with the lack of a meaningful performance review would have sent me packing. My resume would SO be in the mail by now.

The benefits of this unpaid position? Well, the co-workers/bosses leave every day for several hours. Bonus. When they return, they're often in a bad mood and blame me for things that happen on the road. No bonus. I can yell at them when they're gone, go into their work areas and arrange them as I please. Bonus. I often do their work even though it's not my job. No bonus. I can watch TV while I fold clothes with little or no guilt. Major bonus.

I keep in touch with a lot of my friends who are still working "outside the home". (What a dopey euphemism. Don't landscapers work "outside the home"?) Anyway, they tell me stories about vindictive bosses, lazy co-workers and projects gone wrong and I think to myself: "You poor schmuck. There's no way that I'd put up with that." Then it occurs to me: I am putting up with that...every day!

What's the one thing that keeps me here (besides the bi-annual hug from a child or the dog that only asks that I pet her)? Job security. You see, as much as I do really care about how well I do this job, I know, deep down that if they don't like how I do my job, tough. What are they gonna do, fire me? A girl can dream, can't she?