Musings on Life and Love

Work sucks.

Now, I don’t know that I’m entitled to dislike my job more than anyone else. But I’d like to think I have a pretty good reason: I work in a VIP bar that has me face-to-face with spoiled millionaires almost every single day.

And even when there aren’t any millionaires around, there are plenty of a-holes with more money than sense to fill the void. And it’s hard to work when you’re serving people who have everything you want–the money, the power and all the women throwing themselves at them crotch-first.

It’s understandable, right? It’s only human to want to things we can’t have. I’m sure we all feel the same way at some point. We want that promotion… more days off… a tiny bird to keep on our desks that sings Journey songs to get us through the day….

I worked like this for six months. The only thing getting me through each day was the thought of payday–a wonderful day where I could enjoy the fruits of my labour before another week of monotony.

For six months, I was barely scraping by, going through each shift staring at the clock every chance I got, waiting for the sweet moment when I could call it a day.

It was depressing and soul-destroying to have to do something I disliked so much. Every. Single. Day.

But then, I realized something. Something that has made working a breeze, to the point that I not only enjoy, but even look forward to, working now.

I was standing in our back room, wiping sweat from my brow, enjoying a drink I’d just made myself (lemon and lime, with fresh strawberries and raspberries mixed in), when one of the girls who worked on the bar came in and started chatting with me.

That’s when it dawned on me. I was standing there, drinking an ice-cold drink made with fresh ingredients, talking to a beautiful, downright stunning girl, and I was getting paid for every second. Okay, sure, it was just for five minutes, but this is something I did all the time. I just never realised just how lucky I was. Guys on the bar were throwing money at these girls just to try to get a smile out of them, and I was talking to them everyday, joking with them, and best of all, getting to know them.

And I was being paid to do it.

I started thinking of all the other stuff that I got to do while I was on the job. And I realised that, at that moment, I was being paid to think about things I got paid for. Man, that’s Inception-level stuff right there!

That’s when I started enjoying these moments that break up the monotony of a day’s work with something I enjoy, something I want to do. Sure, they may only be a few seconds of enjoyment, but those few seconds are still time I’m genuinely doing something I want to do. For the most fleeting of moments, I’m being paid to do what I like.

From that point on, every time I was feeling down, I just went for a bathroom break. It’s harder to feel down when you realise you just earned money taking care of business. Every time my boss yelled at me… getting paid for it. Every time  a customer wanted their order changed… getting paid for it. Stealing a glance at the cute girl I had a crush on… you’d better believe I was earning money every second of that.

Not everyone can have a job they love or even remotely enjoy. But at the end of the day, we have to earn a living. So why not focus on the little things that make work better, if not great? Times when we’re just messing around, (quietly) bitching about our boss, or simply sitting there doing nothing but reflecting on life. The next time I buy a drink, I’ll remember that I could probably have paid for it ten times over with the money I earned thinking about how much I hate my job.

So hey, maybe work isn’t that bad after all.