That’s just it. People want to be respected. It isn’t just the money. I mean it is the money but it isn’t just the money.

Respect and appreciation is what too many people don’t get. Who wants to be an “essential worker” and be treated like shit? Donald Trump declared the meat packers essential. But they get treated like dirt and a lot of them died. Shades of “The Jungle.” Who wants that? Working retail, another “essential” job, is notorious for crabby customers and tyrannical, scheming bosses who are now bitching that “nobody wants to work.” Well bub unless you learn how to treat people nobody is going to want to work for you. And now the tables have turned. It’s labor that’s in short supply. A lot of people died and even more realized they don’t have to put up with that shit. I thought you were so keen on the free market? Creative destruction and all that? Could it be that asshole bosses are about to be creatively destroyed? That would certainly make the world a better place.

I guess I lucked out in that I actually enjoyed what I did for a living, “9 to 5.” I was a CNC programmer and machinist then a manufacturing engineer. It paid all the bills handily and I thought it was a gas. My bosses didn’t look over my shoulder all the time. They knew I knew my shit and just let me have at it. I often worked late but I enjoyed problem solving so the hours seemed to breeze by. I mean certainly not 100% of the time but enough. I felt respected and appreciated. People need that, at work and at home.

I’m now retired and I have enough. I’m not taking dream vacations but the way I look at it that’s for unhappy people. My wife and I still love each other and we are each other’s best pals, so I don’t have to go on a frantic frog-march to find happiness.