I’ve had some easy jobs in my time. I’ve been the traffic control stop/slow sign guy. That was easy. I’ve been paid to sit in the booth at a gas station and sell people cigarettes, which, looking back on it seems dangerous and poorly thought out, but it was certainly an easy job.
The problem with the easy jobs is that they are inevitably boring and, in almost every case, don’t pay very well. There is one job I can think of, however, that would not be boring and pays really well. I mean, even if you were at the absolute bottom of the pay scale compared to your coworkers, this job still pays better than most.
And it’s easy. Really easy.
That’s the thing that has me a little miffed at the moment. If your job is really easy, and you get paid a bunch of money to do it, you ought to do it well, don’t you think?
I think so!
It just so happens that I run a Super Bowl pool every year. It’s the standard 10x10 grid of squares with the last digit of each team’s score randomly assigned to the squares. It’s not my job, but it is relatively easy to run it, and I do it well. It’s easy for me to do it well because it is easy to do well. You know what I mean?
Now, for those of you folks from the IRS or any kind of federal gambling commission who may be reading this, let me assure you that we play this pool each year for fun.
A lot of fun.
Each square is a fair amount of fun, and when we multiply all that fun by the 100 squares in the grid, there’s a whole lotta fun up for grabs. Each score change results in the holder of that square receiving a substantial amount of fun. Five times more fun than each square is worth, to be precise.
And if you nice government folks are at all concerned about my recent Venmo activity, let me explain that January and February are my months to go out to a lot of expensive dinners with friends, family, and a few folks I just recently met through mutual acquaintances.
Anyway, all I have to do to run the pool is watch the game, keep track of the score changes, and tally up all the fun everyone is having. Like I said, it’s an easy job.
You know what job is even easier than running a Super Bowl pool for fun? Playing in the Super Bowl, of course. That is, as long as you are the guy lucky enough to have that easy job I was talking about earlier – namely the placeholder for extra point attempts – a job literally easier than being the Gatorade guy.
Do you know who failed to do their incredibly well-paid and easy job last Sunday? The Rams’ placeholder, that’s who.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t rooting for the Rams and I didn’t really care if they scored any extra points (or any points at all, for that matter) in the game. It just so happened that one of my squares in the pool would have afforded me a significant amount of fun had the football been upright and available to kick between the uprights at that moment.
But alas, someone failed to do their job. (Their job that they do while literally resting on one knee, I might add.)
I ended up not having as much fun during the game as I could have.
I’m not bitter.
Do your job.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen
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