# Another Day Off?   Right!



## Bob Hubbard (Sep 19, 2003)

Another Day  -  by The OverLord
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Who DARES to ask the boss for yet another day off?

Many of us feel overworked and want more vacation, but only two of us deserve
it.......

   If your like most people, you've got too much to do and not enough time to
do it.  And this week, like so many others in the year, has been a long and
hard one.  You've taken care of the daily duties, handled the major and minor
crises at work and at home; maybe you've even taken some work home.  Your
exhausted, thoroughly drained.  You need a mental health day to recuperate, so
you ask the boss for a day off.  He says NO and gives you this explanation:

   There are 365 days in the year, but you take weekends off, so you have to
subtract 104 days.  That leaves you with 261 working days.

   But you only work eight hours a day.  The other 16 you are either sleeping
or tending to your own business.  So you have to subtract 174 days. That
leaves 87.

   But wait.  We're not through subtracting yet.  You eat lunch every day, and
although lunch hours vary, it is estimated that the average worker consumes 45
work days per year at lunch.

   Coffee breaks?  Figure 21 days over the course of the year.  Take those 21
days from the 42 left from the last calculation, and that leaves you 21 days
to get your work done.

   From those 21 days, you have to subtract your two weeks vacation -- 10 work
days.  Continuing the subtraction, 10 from 21 leaves you only 11 actual full
work days in the entire year.

   But, of course, you do not work on Christmas, New Years, Independence Day
or Thanksgiving.  Most firms now allow 10 paid holidays per year.  After
subtracting the 10 paid holidays from the 11 days remaining, you've got one
full work day to your credit, and you want to take that day off?

Forget It!!!

The boss sees no reason why you should be unduly exhausted given the above
schedule, but you explain to him:

   The USA's population is 200 million or so, of whom 72 million are over the
standard 65-year retirement age.  That leaves 128 million people to do all the
work.

   If you subtract the 75 million under the age of 21, you are left with 53
million actual workers.  Of that 53 million, 27,471,002 are employed by the
Federal Government.  That leaves 25,528,998 workers for all other jobs.

   Subtracting the 8 million people who serve in the Armed Forces leaves us
with 17,528,998 workers.  From here, we must turn to the city and state work
force.  Subtracting their 16,520,000 from 17,528,998 brings us down to
1,008,998.

   Of course, we also should consider those people who have a complete
aversion to work.  Its been estimated that there are some 800,500 vagrants,
bums and the like.  Now we are down to 208,498 people to carry the workload
for the entire nation.  But, you still have to subtract the prison population
which accounts for 208,496 people.

   This means that two people are carrying everybody else.  You know who those
two people are, don't you?  It's you and me.  No wonder we're so exhausted!!!


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