What I Wish I Had Said...

I met my new boss yesterday. I’ve been working at this place where I work now for almost two years. We’ll call it the Mid-City Bowling Lanes. I’m now on my fifth boss. I got reorganized out from under the first two. The third one was downsized. I liked the fourth one okay in part because he was too busy to really pay much attention to me. Now I have a fifth one.

I don’t do so well with the whole “boss” thing. I’m sort of an independent spirit. A free thinker, if you will. Also I don’t like to be told what to do.

But anyway, I met my new boss. We sat down and did the whole “tell me about you, I’ll tell you about me” and “what’s important to me, what’s important to you” things. And the new guy asked me that question that they all want to know, which is basically “what do you want to be when you grow up.”

And for some reason, each of my last three bosses had the notion that a person such as myself would not want to do the job that I currently do for a period of time they refer to as “forever”. And of course not, I think. I don’t want to do any work thing forever. But as long as I’m working, I don’t mind doing this job. They say I’ll get “bored”. Well maybe I’d like to get bored. As long as they keep paying me the money I make right now. I never need another raise. Just give more money to the people that work for me, so they stay around and keep doing their jobs. That’s all I want.

But sure as I’m sitting there counting the minutes until its time for my next smoke break, my new boss says “What do you want your next job to be?”

In a roundabout way, I told him I wanted his job.

But what I wish I had said was “If you dig what you do, they will never get you down.”

And I do dig what I do.

But I am taking the rest of the week off to go an a little vacation trip to New Orleans.

Here’s another attitudinal song, this one from Robert Earl Keen. I think Todd’s “Life’s too short to worry” approach is better than the one prescribed in this REK song. But the REK song is funny. And that counts for a lot. A lot of the work related trouble I've gotten myself into over the years can be traced back to me saying "Wouldn't it be funny if..."