Someone Else

Holy moley, everyone. You've heard me whining about them for years, and I think I've finally discovered the root of the problem: my children seem to believe that they are union employees.

Let that sink in a minute. Let it marinate. They believe they are union employees. 

I recall working in a lab at one point where a lightbulb had burned out. The replacement lightbulb was in the room with us, but could we just... replace the bulb ourselves? No. No we could not. What we could do was fill in a requisition form; schlep it down to the maintenance office; and work in the dark for five days until someone whose job description specifically and explicitly included the screwing-in of lightbulbs had time to screw in our particular lightbulb.

And my children believe our household operates on a similar system - for themselves, at least. 

From this perspective, anything that has not been specifically and explicitly spelled out in their collective agreement in watertight legalese is Not Their Job. Following this logic, it must therefore be Someone Else's Job. Who is this mysterious Someone Else, you might ask? Why that, my friends, is absolutely none of their unionized fucking concern. I suppose if forced to consider the question they might shrug and say, "I dunno. Some contract staff or something?"

When unionized, I've observed that not only are things Not Your Job and therefore may be summarily ignored, you can also blithely announce the need for "downtime" or "me time" or simply "I'm on spring break" and lie in bed staring at a screen for literal days on end with nary a care while Someone Else magicks your cushy lifestyle into existence outside of - below, even - your notice. 

Downtime? Downtime?! FROM. FUCKING. WHAT.

Like, pardon my French, but honestly. These are real true questions, asked in 100% sincerity as the lowly contract staff-slash-magic household entropy reduction elf who is genuinely trying to comprehend the privileged lives led by the union employees of the home: What is it, exactly, that you need downtime from? Is it the hard work of half-assing everything and leaving the fallout from said half-assery for Someone Else to deal with? Is that what you find so wearying? Was it really that hard for you to walk away from the food you dumped in the cupboard around the compost bin in your hasty pursuit of pressing the start button on the dishwasher after eating the supper that Someone Else cooked? Golly, I hope you were able to recover from all that. Please, allow me to do some more work on your behalf that you actually directly caused me to have to do, while you grab a little me time - no need to thank me.  

Y'know, I used to believe lightbulb guy just plodded along from ticket to ticket all day, but now I wonder if he didn't go have a bit of a lie down after each one instead. Probably drove his mom insane. Speaking of, this rant has been downright exhausting - I think I'll take my glass of wine and go have a little downtime myself. If anyone deserves it around here, it's this Someone Else person I keep hearing about.