I’m almost there

I woke up this morning thinking about Target, yeah the retail store. I started to wonder why the cashiers and floor staff make so little money and then realized I have no idea what they make. I’m probably right. They probably don’t make much above minimum wage but still, I don’t know. That got me thinking about things (again). Cashiers are your frontline face to your customers. They aren’t some marketing wonk sitting in a cubicle in a corporate building, they’re the ones that are either smiling and making eye contact or mumbling and ignoring the customer. Jeez, shouldn’t THESE people be making the big bucks (or the BIGGER bucks anyway)? And that got me thinking further.

If you’ve been following along you’ve been treated to my musings on corporate life and my desire for a change. I’ve been pursuing the most middle-of-the-road path in making any changes. I’ve been checking CareerBuilder.com, Monster.com and contacting headhunters. I’ve been doing some networking and letting folks know I’m on the hunt but beyond that I haven’t let my mind wander much into untrampled paths. Bummer. There’s a ton of stuff on those paths.

I had a bit of a mind expanding experience last night while working on a school paper. I was looking for positive effects of the recession and came across a site about theme parks. Actually a site dedicated to the theme park industry complete with a newsletter and updates like who was installing the newest roller coasters for the coming season. Wow! There are people who don’t just WORK at theme parks they’ve made them their careers! If you’re reading this and rolling your eyes and maybe even ARE one of those career theme parkers, please be kind. I’m here to tell you I’ve been an ass.

Me of all people should have been more insightful. My spousal unit works in an equity theater, he does sound and lights, he’s done over hire stage crew work for concerts and events and when I told a co-worker (yes, a CORPORATE co-worker) what he does she was surprised and confused and admitted she didn’t know people DID that. I was surprised because I couldn’t figure out how else the stage got set, the sound got heard and all that stuff. In other words, it was second nature to me.

There must be plenty of people who don’t consider their retail jobs to be anything less than a career. They aren’t hourly drones they are people who really enjoy what it takes to get the product out on the floor, turn over product for each season (despite the fact that the seasons are usually MONTHS off from the actual seasons). I worked in retail in my youth. I’ve worked the register at grocery stores in the past. Honestly I loved those jobs but they didn’t pay and I wasn’t smart enough to consider them careers and stick with them until they DID start to pay.

There’s a grocery store near me, I worked there back in the 80’s part-time. I loved it, but I had to feed into the notion that it wasn’t a “career”. Had I stayed there, I’m sure by now I’d be a front-end manager or a department manager and I’d have a career. There’s a guy that works there. He worked there back in the 80’s too. He’s the store manager now. I always hear him being paged while I’m shopping. He works hard (from what I can tell) but he always seems happy. I always see him with a smile on his face. He always says hello to regular customers and former employees (I’d fall into both of those categories). What was I THINKING?

There’s a clothing store near me that I shop in fairly regularly. There’s one woman who seems to be there every time I go in. The store carries nice clothes, not fancy but nice casual clothes. This woman is always dressed in a way that is almost a walking advertisement for the clothes available in the store. She’s probably around my age. She is lovely to deal with. I don’t know if she’s a manager or not but she is most likely a full-time employee at the very least. She seems to love her job and the people she deals with. What a lovely feeling that must be.

These people have been under my nose all along. I’ve clearly given thought to them but never connected my thoughts to MY wants and needs. Most importantly I never connected those jobs to the word “career” before. I have a friend who works at Costco. I keep joking that I want to go work at Costco. It’s near my house, you can wear jeans to work (crazy but that’s very appealing to me) I hear they have good benefits and I shop there all time. Everyone keeps rolling their eyes and telling me that I don’t REALLY want to do that, after all I’ve got college degrees, I’m a “professional”. Why is my friend working at Costco any less of a professional than I am?

I was under the mistaken belief that a career meant sitting in an office all day. I’m not that person. I like to be up and moving around. I actually (at some level) enjoy dealing with people. (Those of you who know me, don’t roll your eyes, I’ll explain.) I always tell people that one thing I liked about my grocery store job was that you only had to deal with each individual member of the public for a finite amount of time. They were in and out of your line (and your LIFE) in a few minutes so that squalling brat became nothing more than a memory in a few brief minutes. The upside was that you got to see a lot very nice people or run into people from your circle of acquaintances that you didn’t normally see. “Hey, Kim, great to see you, we really need to get together sometime” that kind of thing.

I even like the more flexible schedules offered out there in retail-land. I don’t really like working Monday through Friday from 9AM-5PM. I don’t. I like the thought of working on Saturday from 10AM-6PM but knowing I’ll have off on Monday while the office wonks are at work. I like the thought that I could go out to breakfast on a weekday when the diners are less crowded and enjoy a leisurely breakfast and a good book (or my husband’s company if he’s off that day, too). Truth be told, I really HATE the regular predictability of office work.

Since the recession has hit and even before then, I’d have conversations with my husband that we don’t have jobs where we DO things anymore, we don’t MAKE things. We sit on our butts in offices and cubicles but what are we DOING? We’re going to meetings. My husband would generously point out that he DOES things when he goes to work. Yes, he does. I don’t. I really feel like I DON’T. Office work comes down to a lot of turf wars and projects to defend your turf and a lot of the actual work could be outsourced. You can’t outsource store personnel, even with those self-checkout lanes (which I hate) you still end up needing people to run some registers and to help out the folks bravely attempting the self-checkout. You have to WORK.

I’ve discounted these jobs for too long.

Of course my problem is finding a way to get into a job like this and still make enough money. Not a fortune, but “enough” and yes I do have a magic number attached to “enough”. For heaven’s sake what OTHER jobs are out there that I haven’t thought about yet?

As I ramped up my job search I kept saying that I wanted firmly “OUT” of the industry that I’ve been working in with the explanation that I didn’t want to do the same dance on a different stage. Silly me, the fact remains that if I stayed in a cubicle/office job I’d still be doing the same dance on a different stage. I want to do a different act altogether, what an AH-HA moment.

It’s funny but I credit my schoolwork for this ah-ha moment. How funny is that? I’m in a Master’s program for Organizational Leadership, very much the office gig type of degree. Who woulda thunk it would lead me down an entirely different path? I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull this off, I don’t know if I’ll find a way to get myself into a job that I actually WANT with enough money to live but I think I may be onto something.

Top 100

Forbes magazine does a list every year of the top 100 places to work. The list is very competitive, companies vie for a position on the list so they can recruit and retain the top talent in their desired fields. In these tough economic times and with the upswing of people trying out more flexible work arrangements since they’ve been laid off I’m proposing a new list.

The Top 100 Places NOT to Work in America!

This doesn’t mean these are bad companies to work for instead it means these are great companies to contract or freelance with. Many companies try the whole contractor thing but they just can’t measure up when it comes to doing it right. Companies want to be the parent and disciplinarian, they want everyone to show up for work each morning and put in a full and productive day. Most companies have not yet made it to an enlightened stage of development whereby they contract someone to execute a specific role on a project and then let them do it. America’s corporate environment is one of managing much but not actually WORKING.

Imagine that you have project management expertise. You are great at working with vendors, you can negotiate deals, meet deadlines, come in under budget and keep all the key players happy. You work best on your own delegating to appropriate team members and checking in once a week or so. In most cases corporations want your talents but they don’t want to relinquish their control over you. If they did that then perhaps all those middle managers would have to do WORK.

What I’m proposing is researching the top companies that can do this. They seek out experts to perform functions on a contract basis and let them do their jobs. Certainly there needs to be reporting and accountability throughout the project, it wouldn’t be a success if the project itself tanked in the end.

What would be required to make it into the Top 100 Best Companies NOT to Work for? Certainly fair pay would be high on the list since the person is basically self-employed and would need to provide their own benefits as well as paying themselves for days off. The proposed fee structure should also take into consideration that the contractor should use their own office space and office supplies as well.

The hiring company should understand that the contractor works for themselves, they are self-employed and as such shouldn’t be expected to be available Monday through Friday between the hours of 8:30AM and 5PM. After all, a successful contractor has other customers as well and needs to provide services to them so if your contractor doesn’t answer your e-mail immediately it doesn’t mean they aren’t working, it just may mean they aren’t working for YOU at that moment.

Here’s another item that would make a company good for contractors, if you offer your contractor a permanent job and they turn you down DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY. It’s very likely your contractor prefers working for himself instead of a big corporation. Don’t take for granted that everyone is bucking for their very own cubicle. When you DO get turned down, hire the person back on another project, if you thought their work was good enough to make them permanent then they’re certainly still good enough to contract with again…and again…and again.

If the Top 100 Best Not to Work companies got their names AND their contracting techniques out there in the public view it may actually help other companies with more traditional mindsets to open up and change their policies to embrace changing times a bit more. It may not really be the best idea to try to recruit and RETAIN the best talent, sometimes new blood can bring positive changes to a project or department.

Let’s shake things up a bit. I bet there would be plenty of work to go around and people would really need to WORK and not just “manage” others to do the work. Contractors would actually eliminate the need for so many managers and make individuals more accountable for the job they do. Let’s face it if you work for yourself and you need to keep generating work you will work hard to get the job done. In a corporate environment shit just trickles downhill without much work getting done but with individual accountability more work, less shit.

Forbes or Entrepreneur magazine, I’m putting the proposal out there and I’m willing to do the work on getting the word out about the 100 Best Places NOT to Work in the US!

And the award goes to…

I do performance art and I make a living at it! I’ve done it for 10 long years. It’s amazing isn’t it? Who would think that a performance artist could stick to it for 10 years and make a living at it but it’s true and I’m here to tell you so.

Where do I perform? I have a running show in the halls of corporate America. Who would think that a corporation would hire a performance artist; I’ll bet they do it all the time. Oh yes they do. They don’t know they’re doing it, they just do it. My job title doesn’t say “Performance Artist”. I don’t get to sit in a shop window in a flesh colored leotard and pick my nose and stick it to the window; though that often seems more appealing than what I do in my routine.

I have to say that I hate my costumes but what can you do? Part of it being Performance Art is that it isn’t who I really am or what I really stand for so of course my costumes would need to reflect that. Performance Art for 8 hours a day is EXHAUSTING work. I think the nose-picking routine would actually be more believable but that’s not what I was hired for so I can’t switch things up now.

Despite the original nature of performance art there’s a lot of structure surrounding my act. It’s what the producers demand. They pay the big bucks to get the show they want. The first few years seemed okay but as the years slip by the rules become more restrictive and tougher to navigate. I hate when they make me take my show on the road, I’ve done the road show all over the world and it’s as painful elsewhere as in the confines of the day-to-day space.

One thing I can assure you of is when I leave this gig it will be to get very far away from this type of work. I need to stop the insanity and leave it all behind. I can’t say that I will look back fondly on most aspects of this gig but I will certainly look back on it from time-to-time.

Some of the other people seem to really embrace this work and all it entails. They are buoyed by their supposed importance and believe they are somehow making a difference in some odd way. Rest assured, they are not making enough of a difference to cause even the slightest shift in the direction of the universe but still, they do what they need to do to serve the master or demons they’ve created.

So I gear up each morning in business casual outfits and a neatly coiffed hairstyle; conservative make-up patted on my face. I trek out for the morning commute toting my cuppa joe and my briefcase; I slip on a magnetic ID badge (just can’t wait ‘til they find out these things have been giving women breast cancer for the past 20 years or some other equally horrible revelation) to let me into the theater I perform in every weekday.

There needs to be an end in sight for this gig. I need to know that somehow I’ll be able to leave this stage behind once and for all. Kick out the footlights with the toe of my beat-up Doc Martens and twirl out the door in a haze of relief and confusion.

I wonder if anyone else feels this way? I wonder what the reaction would be if someone from there read this, would they have an “ah-ha” moment, would they be surprised, angry, hurt? Would they think it was funny? I doubt that humor would be a factor. My findings tell me that the corporate stage is a mostly humorless environment. I can’t see my boss, or HR reading this and laughing out loud at my antics. I can’t see getting high-fived in the hallway by the VP, but wouldn’t that be fun? It might even be a little honest.

I know that if I were doing a job I loved and had meaning for me I wouldn’t be doing performance art anymore. It would be real. I would be alive and in the moment. I do share the current stage with some people that actually appear to buy the myth. I’m fascinated by them. They use the word passion when they talk about their cubicle lives and I’m baffled by it. I want to know what drives them. I hope they genuinely feel that way for some reason. They may not want what I want but I want to understand what they want. I hope that they feel a connection and a sense of meaning about what they do because if they don’t, well, they’ll keep performing on that stage like trained chimps.

I’m not done yet. My run continues in the theater of the absurd but I can finally admit to what I’ve been doing. I can own it now. In 12-step programs they say that the first step to healing is admitting you have a problem.

Same Work, Different Rules

Remember when self-employed meant you owned your own store or landscaping business? In the days after the industrial revolution people got themselves a job and ticked off the time until they got that gold watch to celebrate 20 years of dedicated service. The recessions of the 70s, 80s and 90s coupled with a steady decline in America as a manufacturing nation saw a change in how people planned their careers. People no longer expected to stay at one company for 20 years. People changed jobs based on career opportunities, available jobs with better pay somewhere else, or the chance of working for a more stable company in a time of instability, basically staying a step ahead of layoffs.

Now we’re mired in another recession; a long and scary one. Recovery hasn’t been quick or easy and many of the unemployed once sat at a lofty salary level. These successive recessions have steadily eroded the landscape of the corporate environment, well that and the escalating distrust of corporate leaders. I watched some of the health insurance hearings the other day and heard one person, the president of a health insurance company, calmly tell the panel that her base salary was $1.1 MILLION dollars per year, she received a $73,000 bonus for 2009 and she also has stock options. Does she need that much money? She’s a rock star at that salary.

But what is the answer? Contracting. I think that may be it. Basically you’re working for yourself. Imagine the freedom of signing on for a project not a life. You negotiate the deal. Maybe not every company will accept your terms but if you have enough to offer they just might. Imagine being able to say, “I only work Mon-Thu unless there is a pressing project-specific need for my time on a Friday, that time will be billed separately above the fixed project cost”, or “My business is closed July and December every year”. In other words imagine being your own boss. The requirement is that you deliver the project on time and within budget, beyond that you make the rules.

I don’t know that corporate America is quite ready to lose control at this level but if the displaced middle-managers of recent layoffs have found that they enjoy having a life more than being a corporate slave then companies may need to loosen up a bit to get the talent they need. There are benefits for the corporations as well but corporations tend to be control freaks and may not embrace the benefits just yet.

Let’s start with the sky-high cost of office space; contractors will most likely want to work from their home offices meaning less need for ever expanding offices with ever-escalating facilities fees. Reduced costs of benefits, contract workers carry their own healthcare benefits and as far as holiday pay goes, if a contractor closes for a holiday it’s on them not the hiring company to pay themselves (so budget carefully worker bees).

Here’s my personal favorite, less need for those awful all-day “teambuilding” events. Let’s face it, the fewer full-time employees the less need to hold pep rallies for them. The cost saving on this alone should make investors and the board of directors pretty pleased.

There’s even a potential for reduced HR intervention. If a contractor isn’t fulfilling the terms of the contract there is usually a 30-day clause whereby the contract can be terminated in writing by either party and the contractor and company go their separate ways, no need for delicate HR discussions behind closed doors.

Let’s not discount the benefit companies get for using minority owned businesses so every female or minority contractor is a minority business just waiting to be tapped.

In the “traditional” structure the company holds all the cards. They say how many sick days you can take, how many weeks of vacation you get, what hours you’re expected to be in the office. Doesn’t really seem fair does it? You no longer get very much in return for that type of servitude. There is no guarantee that job will be there for you in a year or even a week so why should they hold all the cards?

You may say, “as a contractor, if I don’t work I don’t get paid” yeah, but you can charge enough that those unpaid days don’t cut into your budget, you work out your pay, after all you’re the boss. So if you’ve got a contract for 10 months for $200,000 you can put it into a corporate account and then pay yourself out weekly or bi-weekly based on a salary you and yourself have agreed to.

Ahh and one of my personal favorite upsides to the whole “contracting” gig; NO DRESS CODE! I know that seems small but think about the clothes you have in your closet that you only own because they meet your company’s dress code. Certainly you’d need a couple of meeting suits and a couple of business casual outfits for the times you need to show up in an office but you’ll no longer be going to an office 5 days a week adhering to a closely monitored business casual code. Oh yuk, toss those pleat-front khakis NOW.

Most companies would also probably work more efficiently if they broke down their work to projects and then had specific project managers and the work was clearly laid out. When you have people on staff you actually need to have work for them all the time even if it isn’t work they want to do or work that even needs to get done. Contracting means people get paid for the work that needs to get done and then they go away or sign on for another project.

What’s your specialty? Are you the project manager? The one that lays it all out, parses out the budget and assigns the tasks? Then advertise yourself that way. What if you have a different specialty? Do you have a project specific task? Are you a technical writer of some sort? A training expert? Put it out there and keep growing your skills.

It isn’t much different than owning a landscape company or even the corner luncheonette. You start out that landscaping business knowing how to work a lawnmower and you have good people skills. You get a chance to do a little more than mowing lawns, you start trimming hedges, someone asks if you would plant the mums they just bought at the market and suddenly your resume grows but within the field you chose to work. Now you don’t just wield a mean power mower you can start to add landscape “design” to your credits. A neighbor sees the work you did and asks for your business card. Nice.

Or you bought that luncheonette you always wanted. Lots of hard work, health inspections and belligerent wait staff but word of mouth starts to spread that your omelets are the fluffiest or your soup really IS homemade and before you know it you’ve stretched a little in your own field. Sell yourself as a technical writer because you are but the more you do it the more you see what needs to happen to get the job done and before you know it you’re a technical project manager and you’re still selling the business you originally started.

There are so many positives for both the business and the employee that it’s tough to see a downside. Yes, the downside is drumming up the work but aren’t we all trying to do that right now anyway?

The more I think of this work model the less the old corporate model makes sense. There needs to be people attached to the company and the board of directors but maybe there doesn’t need to be as MANY people attached to that. We desperately need to change the way we work in this country, we need to re-ignite that entrepreneurial spirit in America and maybe we can start that with our own revolt against the corporate game. Imagine telling a company that is very interested in hiring you that you won’t work for them but you’ll work WITH them as your own boss.

Just shut up already

Here’s a tip folks, if you’re in a hospital day-stay unit try to talk softly. Use your inside voice. Oh you think that I’m not talking to YOU, but I am. I really am. I don’t want to be lying in a hospital bed waiting for surgery and finding out who’s living with whom and who’s not gonna have the grades to make it out of community college. I don’t want to know if you thought that Susie’s wedding was too ostentatious for your tastes.

You think this doesn’t happen; oh but it does. There I was lying alone in my little curtained off hospital bed reading my Tom Brokaw book and I couldn’t even focus on the depth of his feelings about the Vietnam War because of the loud distraction two beds away from me. From what I could tell it was a mom and her two adult children (a man and a woman) and boy could they yak.

Mom was clearly going in for hip surgery and to have some hardware removed from her knee that was no secret to anyone in a 100 foot radius. Then there was Steve and his issues with community college, good LORD that boy had better shape up and fast because he’s got that girlfriend movin’ in with him and she’s expecting big things from him and what he can provide.

At times I felt like chiming into the conversation since they were actually wrong on a couple of points and I felt the need to correct them but I kept my big mouth shut. I figured once I jumped into that pool I wasn’t gettin’ out without a life raft.

My nurse was wonderful, truly a saint and at one point she popped over to check on me. I motioned her over and whispered that those people were REALLY LOUD. She said they were the talk of the nurses’ station…and the nurses’ station was NOT nearby. Their nurse had politely asked them to tone it down twice and they never lowered the volume even one decibel so an executive decision was made to move “mom” to the pre-surgery holding area where no visitors were allowed. My nurse assured me that when I got there in an hour “mom” would still be waiting for her surgery but they had to do something. I can only imagine how loud bro’ and sis must’ve been in the family waiting area.

I must admit I thought this was brilliant and sure enough when I was brought into the holding area before my surgery I was there for mere minutes but “mom” was still there. They had told her that her doctor had suddenly gotten tied up in the previous surgery and they couldn’t bring her back to pre-op. I know that I must’ve gone under the anesthesia with a grin on my face.

I realize that a hospital is not exactly a church or a funeral home, BUT, even in the happiest of areas (let’s say the maternity ward) remember that you are in a public place, keep it down folks.

You just never know…

My dad is not someone I would ever consider a “world traveler”. In all the years I’ve known him I only remember him leaving the state we live in once, to drive to somewhere in New England (Cape Cod, I think) so we could have a family visit with my aunt (my mom’s sister) and her new husband. I don’t remember much about the trip except that my parents still seemed so young and full of fun. I remember that I had to stay with my aunt’s in-laws so the adults could go out for the evening. They were going to dinner and to see The Graduate and it was far too racy for little me to go see.

Beyond that I only recall him going on disgruntled family trips to the Shore where we would get up too early in the morning and drive too long to get there (or too long for a little kid anyway).

In thinking about this though it occurs to me that my dad was in the “Korean Conflict”. He went to Korea. He did. I know he talked about it and somewhere in all those boxes now in storage there are trinkets gathered from his time there. He may have even passed through Germany on his way to or from Korea.

After this realization I started to look at some of the older guys I run into in line at Dunkin’ Donuts a little differently. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that there are younger guys out there that have been to Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan but my thoughts here are not about war but about leaving the US. The generations that have come since Korea and Vietnam are of a generally more well-traveled group of people.

I never looked at my dad as someone who went anywhere because, well, he DIDN’T go anywhere. I also never looked at my friends’ dads as having been anywhere. I sometimes wonder if my best friend’s dad ever leaves a one mile radius of his house, I’ve never seen him further from home than that. But I’m pretty sure that he, too was in an overseas war.

Think about it, that sweet old greeter at the local Wal-Mart just may have been in Korea or Vietnam or who knows where courtesy of the US Armed Services. People didn’t travel globally the way we do now so for many people the primary way to see the world was because they joined the Army. I’m fascinated by this concept. I want to start conversations with strange men waiting in line at 7-11 (if they meet the age demographic profile) and find out where they’ve been in the world and why.

Ten years ago I had no intention of going anywhere. Instead of joining the military I joined a global corporation. I needed the job just like those guys probably needed the military benefits. I didn’t really think they’d send me away so often or so soon but they did. I bet when some young kid sees me on line at Dunkin’ Donuts on a Saturday morning they don’t think of me as a world traveler. They don’t envision me walking through downtown Tokyo on my own or watching a dog follow its owner into a porn shop in Zurich. I probably look like any other middle-class mom (and I’m not even a mom) standing in line for my iced coffee and whole wheat bagel.

You just never know where people have been but I think the most surprising ones are those sweet old guys who let you cut in front of them in line at the grocery store or suddenly offer to buy your cup of coffee for no reason. Those guys who never left the lower 48 again once they ended their military service 30, 40, 50 or more years ago have a whole stockpile of stories that I’ll just never know and some of them would probably prefer to forget those times anyway, such a shame but it’s their memories to cherish or forget.

But next time you see some sweet old guy handing you the sale flyer at Wal-Mart, or for that matter then next time you see some average looking middle-aged woman in line at Dunkin’ Donuts, take a minute to wonder where in the world they’ve been and what in the world they’ve seen, I bet you’d be surprised.

Shhh, let’s keep this one between us

You need to keep this on the down low. There’re a few little quirks I want to share with you, the subject of said quirks may not be happy having them hung out for the world to see. Let’s start with food rules. I don’t mean food RULES! I mean rules about food. Don’t get me wrong, in my little world food DOES rule! I like food, food is good and tasty and we need food to live. However other than my self-imposed dietary restraints (I’m too vain to be a fatty in my declining years) I don’t have a lot of food rules.

I like omelets for dinner sometimes. Who hasn’t happily indulged in cold pizza or pasta for breakfast? I can go through phases where I want to have French toast every single day until I’m tired of it. I’m not here to talk about MY food rules; I don’t have many of them. I’m here to talk about someone else’s food rules and if he reads this he’ll know who he is (and then get very angry at me).

Did you know that you can’t store a leftover roaster chicken vertically? That’s a food rule in my house. It’s true. I made a roast chicken a year or so ago. We didn’t eat nearly as much as I thought and I was too lazy to pick the meat off the bones so I took the whole thing and put it into a tall round container. Wow, looky that, it fit perfectly and it even took up less room in the fridge to store it vertically than if I had laid it out horizontally. Well awesome me.

Yeah, until my darling hubby came across the VERTICAL CHICKEN! I heard a groan from the kitchen. I went to check that hubby hadn’t succumbed to some horrible kitchen ailment, no gremlins in the blender or anything along those lines and found him staring at the remains of the roast chicken resting comfortably in their vertical container. He shook the container and its contents at me and asked what it was. I explained that it was leftover roast chicken to which he sighed, shook his head and looked at me pitiably. Clearly he had to explain to me that roast chicken is stored HORIZONTALLY, not VERTICALLY. There is no such thing as vertical chicken.

Breakfast foods cannot be for dinner; or even for lunch. If you’ve made it to 11AM without having your bacon and eggs then it’s time to move on and have that ham and cheese sandwich. Lunch comes with two side dishes. I don’t mean at the diner…I mean EVERYWHERE. You can have a sandwich and soup and chips or you can have a sandwich with soup and salad or a pickle and cole slaw but lunch comes with two sides. Go figger. I thought lunch was whatever you could grab and eat to stop being hungry until dinner.

Dinner comes with many rules. My house could be the textbook model for a 1962 home economics class. For all you young ‘uns out there home ec was this cute little course of study that taught girls how to be great wives, and I don’t mean by earning equal or more than their husbands but by getting stains out of white dress shirts and making sure dinner was on the table every night.

Dinner is a meat, a starch and a veggie…and LOT’S OF IT. I’ve tried to argue against the starch at every meal but it falls on deaf ears. I’ve tried to convince him that corn is a starch but that falls flat as well. The interesting part of the argument is the part where he says, “but this is how we grew up, it MUST BE RIGHT” and I respond “but we’ve learned more about food and nutrition since we were little kids, shouldn’t we go with more current knowledge?” Sounds so reasonable, right? Nope. The world came to a screeching halt sometime around 1966 and that’s where our food habits will remain.

To recap; breakfast is served until 11AM and consists strictly of breakfast foods; eggs, bacon, hash browns, French toast, or cereal. Lunch can start at 11AM and go until around 3ish. Lunch consists of a sandwich and two side dishes such as soup and chips or cole slaw and a pickle. Dinner is sometime after 5PM and has meat/fish/chicken, a starch and a veggie. Meats can’t repeat two nights in a row which means if there’s beef on Monday there can’t be beef on Tuesday; if there’s chicken on Tuesday then maybe there’ll be pork on Wednesday, ya gotta rotate this stuff out.

I can’t stress how crazy this is. I always thought the whole idea of growing up was that I could do crazy stuff like eating French toast for dinner eight nights in a row if that’s what I wanted to do. I wanna know who the food police are that are gonna pound down our door and make sure we’re not having French toast for dinner and what the penalty will be. That’s my big question, what is the penalty for eating French toast for dinner or having beef two nights in a row?

Why can’t the rules change?