It seems I’m a greedy bigwig.

This observation came about after ‘eavesdropping’ on a conversation today. It wasn’t entirely my fault I was listening in, as the conversation was between a cashier at a major corporation and the fella she was attending to. And they were, after all, doing the big eye-rolling, arm-waving, looking-over-their-shoulders act to make sure everyone around could see they were talking about Important Things.

She was complaining that she was scheduled to work this coming major holiday weekend – the Friday after Thanksgiving in the US is a major sales opportunity which I tend to avoid. But others like it, so stores that have traditionally understaffed the registers ask the employees to work extra shifts to make up for the ‘missing’ employees. Employees who work extra hours on the holiday weekends are asked to not come in for shifts prior to or after the weekends, so as to not work more than 40 hours in a given week. I know this because I’ve ‘been there, done that’, as well as have listened in on similar conversations such as this morning’s.

This is where the ‘bigwig’ statement came into play. According to her, the bigwigs get to have the holidays off while normal people don’t. Not fair, she commented loudly, ‘we’ ought to have the right to see ‘our’ families, too. And the bigwigs get to see their families so it’s not fair.

She’s complaining of having a legal, safe, comfortable place in which to work, where she’s been given a day or two ‘off’ in the same time period as the holiday season so she can maintain her income level and still spend time with her family.

Mind you, this is the day immediately following the day a different major corporation closed its doors due to bankruptcy proceedings, leaving over 18,000 employees with ample time to spend with family but no income over this holiday season.

So, I’m in her ‘bigwig’ classification.

I get to see my family on major holidays. Some years I even choose to take time off work so we can have some focused family time during the seasons. Is this because I’m ‘lucky’, or have ‘connections’?

No.  It’s because I’ve given up family time on a daily basis for years, working my connections and networking with colleagues to ensure I’ve got a fruitful environment in which to look for potential clients.

I’ve done split-shifts, time-shifting, and extreme unpaid overtime to build and support a global client base from which to draw up projects.  Often I’m up at 3 am to make conference calls with Singapore, in the office by 6 am to liaise with clients in London, continue to work with local clients in the city and also in NY, then out of the office by 2 pm local time to meet appointments with my children and grandchild.

It’s not unusual to run a 12-to-16 hour workday in the heat of battle, and I’ve done a 36-hour ‘workday’ to meet deadline as needed.  Yes, that’s 36 straight hours – no sleep but yes, food and toilet breaks – to get things moving along.

So yah, I’ve earned time with my family.  Not because I waited for some corporate HR person to graciously bestow ‘holiday time’ on me, but because I’ve aggressively but politely chased this time off and ensured my clients are comfortable with the coverage they have while I’m off the clock.

Speaking of off-the-clock, for me it’s ‘no play, no pay’.  I only get paid when I’m online, billing.

Thus is the holidays’ life of a bigwig.

Then it’s the other conversationalist’s turn to add to the wealth-envy-fest.  Seems that the greedy ones always take time off because they can afford to spend lots of money on their families while “we regular guys” suffer.

They even have so much money, he offers, that he gets gift cards for being a regular service provider.  He went on to explain that he provides material and labor for a company that sub-contracts him, and some of the clients “in their fancy homes” have given him seasons’ greetings’ cards with money loaded on them for him to use as he wishes.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with giving…” he notes when he sees my Vulcan eyebrow-raise motion, “but seems to me we ought to have the same right to spend lots of money on our families too during holidays, and we can’t do that, while these folks are just giving money away with their fat bank accounts.”

I wanted to ask him if he’d given the cards back or if he used them.  But since the line was backing up behind us with folks waiting to move on, and I had family waiting at home, I chose not to ask the question.

But that got me to thinking.  By his standards, then yes, I was greedy, too.  My family’s needs are met – for the most part – but not all of their wants.  This is the difference I saw in his shopping cart and mine, to take a specific example.  Could a family do without the things in his cart?  I venture to say yes, looking at the junk food, alcohol and disposable goods.  My visit was a standard-issue-run of cleaning supplies (keep the family healthy), dog food (keep the pit-bull/lab mix guard dog healthy) and winter clothing (again, keep family healthy).

What will I spend on the family for holiday season?  Probably not a lot on presents, just as in years past.  We focus on the family time portion and not on the gift portion of the season.  As mentioned above, I don’t get paid for holiday time off, so a week off is indeed very costly with regards to bank account.  But there’s no price to be put on family time, as I’ve painfully learned in the past.  So yes, if money spent=greed, then I’m guilty here.

Giving?  Seems this fella judges those who have enough money to give to others outside of the family and finds them guilty of greed as well.  Personally I encourage philanthropy – especially if one has an opportunity to freely give personally to a person or cause.  There are reasons for the stress on ‘freely’ and ‘personally’ which I won’t go into here.  But yes, I give, and therefore am greedy in his eyes.

Fat bank account?  Heh well, I’m not on the ‘greedlist’ there, but aim to be, and will work diligently to get to that point.  Why?  For starters, no one will be able to help me in the future but the ‘me’ of today.  There will be no ‘Social Security’ to draw upon, and corporate pensions are not in my future, due to the type of work in which I am employed.  I choose to not afford gov’t-sponsored medical or housing care in the future – the cost of accepting these ‘free’ services is more than I can morally bear.  I can probably tap my childrens’ shoulders for help as needed, but they’ll have a social and financial mess of their own to deal with in the future.

So it’s up to the ‘me’ of today to find a way to pay for the daily requirements the ‘me’ of the future will need when he’s no longer employable.  The only way to do that is for the ‘me’ of today to spend less than he earns, bankroll the rest, and wisely plan for how to manage that extra money.  I need a fat bank account to pay for the things ‘me’ of the future will need – food, utilities, housing, etc.  And that’s just the basics.  So yes, by those standards I plan to be greedy.

Eventually the two broke up the conversation – a line manager came round to see what was the delay in the check-out line.  Interestingly enough she also had a few things to say and stirred the pot by stating that some employees from a different company are staging a ‘walk-out’ on the holiday weekend.

“Mmmm-mmgh”, said the checkout lady, who started to ring up my items, “that’s what I’M talkin about.”

[sigh]