Complaining

I don't like to complain.  I really don't.  It's non-productive and unattractive and not at all fun.  We all know someone (or perhaps more than one someone) who is an otherwise likeable person but just seems to complain all the time.  They are the ones for whose departure everyone else is eagerly awaiting, so the party can start being worth getting dressed up for.  I don't want to be that someone, so I try not to complain.

 

The problem is that I have so much to complain about.  Let me just select one complainable thing, one thing which I promise will not become a regular institution here: work.  I don't remember if I've mentioned it or not, but I work in a printing plant from 3 to 11 every night to pay the bills until I can finish my degree.  I, to put it bluntly, hate my job.  I despise my work, abhor my company, and outright loathe the printing industry.  If any of you get a chance to get in to printing, don't.  Think twice even about publishing.  It's not glamorous or interesting or challenging or even worth staying awake for.  It's an industry that it decidedly not life-or-death, and yet everyone - especially management - thinks it is.  It's not their fault, I suppose; if they don't make their deadlines, people will take their next project to the competition, and the plant will dry up and blow away.  Even so, I know people in health care - literally, a life-or-death career if there ever was one - that have less stress on a day-to-day level.  It's insane, it really is.

 

To wit: our big plate processing machine requires filtered water, but no one has bothered to run a pipe into the room that needs it - instead, we need to go upstairs, fill up the plastic jugs, and carry the water, Swiss milkmaid-style, down into the processing room.  We also have a half-million-dollar proofing machine that sits in a room with no protection against dust, heat, cold, or humidity, and then we're blamed when it's not working.  We have a customer service rep that can't read or write.  Our office manager, eager to cut costs and curb employee theft, has taken away - I swear this is all true - drinking water.  It's madness.

 

There.  Now, two paragraphs is more than enough.  I could keep going about what sucks about my job, but I'm drawing the line there.  No more complaining, no siree. 

 

Instead, and because I'm not feeling very well right now, I'm going to leave with one thought conjuring up one of life's little but profound pleasures.  Whatever did we do, how did we face our days, and by what power did we motivate ourselves out the front door and into a productive, healthy, and satisfying work week, before whoever it was invented the Golden Graham? 

 

Seriously, those things are manna.