On days like today, I feel a sneaking empathy – and yes, envy – for Patterico’s Loser of the Year
I’ve been on unemployment three times in the past six years. Each time was better than the last, and each time I stayed on until the last cent was exhausted. I didn’t even try to get a job; it was a paid vacation.
… Given a choice between getting a check every week for doing nothing and getting a check every week for flushing 40 hours of the prime of their lives down the toilet, [working people] chose the latter. I mean, what kind of self-hating, masochistic Protestant bulls^!t is that?
I’m with ya, brother. I’m tired. As a small business owner, I frequently work seven days a week, and normally in excess of ten hours a day. I must be a fool. I really must. I would dearly love a paid vacation right about now. But here’s where he lost me -
Not only do I feel no guilt whatsoever about sucking from the state’s teat, I feel that I’m absolutely entitled to it.
Charming. Obviously his parents didn’t love him enough to discipline him. The punk. Let’s hope he never breeds. Let’s hope some day he grows up enough to be embarrassed about his comments. And it’s not just him, it’s his sister, too -
Though I’ve never experienced this particular horror, there are times when, try as you might, you just can’t get fired. My sister, already a veteran of one maxed-out unemployment tour, decided a few months ago that she wanted to get back on the gravy train. She had a miserable job at a nonprofit, surrounded by smiley people with mean people suck bumper stickers, and she had had enough. She started coming in at noon, rolling her eyes during meetings, skipping required company functions, and did zero work. All her boss did was call her in for occasional gentle talks about her “attitude” that ended with entreaties for her to be a better “team member.” My sister claims that if you’re a minority female—our mom is Korean—it’s absolutely impossible to get fired, for reasons of political correctness and fear of litigation. (Her previous stint on unemployment was because the company went bankrupt.) She ended up resigning and getting a similar job at an office across town that has a reputation for sudden and inexplicable layoffs. Her fingers are crossed.
And apparently several friends, one of whom commented on the economic stimulus debate.
“The best part,” he said, chuckling, “was when one of the senators supporting the extension was like, ‘These people want to work, they want nothing more than to work but through no fault of their own, they just can’t find jobs!’”
And I’ll certainly keep these nice folks in mind when I’m calling my Congressman and Senator about these kinds of bills. I’ve always supported the idea of a social safety net, having benefited from it myself, but when I read this kind of thing, it certainly loses it’s appeal:
We may debate the purpose of life, or whether it even has a purpose, but one thing we can all agree on is that we were not put on this Earth to work, work, work. To be the master of one’s time and oneself is the obvious ideal. Most people don’t experience this until retirement, when they’re old and broken down … I’m having my golden years now. And they are golden! Youth is not being wasted on this youth.
Actually, we were put on this earth to (among other things) work, work, work. 
In fact, even God in whose image we are made completed his work before taking a day off:
And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.
(Genesis 2:2)
And even though I do get tired of it from time to time, it is good.
