The Monday Conspiracy

Let me start by saying that I’m really not into conspiracy theories, although I have seen a few that make me wonder…  Anyway, have you ever noticed how many people don’t like Mondays? I used to think that it was people’s imaginations when they said that Mondays were always bad. It was like they were expecting it to be bad, so they were looking for it to be bad, so they had a bad attitude, so everything ended up being bad. Kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Nevertheless, I have finally found compelling evidence that shows me that Mondays are truly a conspiracy. Yes, they’re a conspiracy to make us hate 1/7 of our life. Why anyone would want to make so many people miserable is beyond me. However, there is no question that there is a secret society, whose sole goal is to make everyone hate Mondays. What? You don’t believe me? Look at this:

• Almost all workplaces start the work week on Monday. If there were no conspiracy, why wouldn’t some of them start on Tuesday, or Wednesday?
• There are no traffic jams on Saturday of Sunday, yet every Monday morning, millions of people are stuck in a long line of creeping traffic.
• Many companies pay on Friday, ensuring that their employees blow their paychecks over the weekend and have to go back to work on Monday.
• Monday night football has much lower viewership than Sunday football, showing that most people are too tired and too bummed out to even watch football.
• Less is accomplished in any workplace on Mondays than any other day of the week, except Fridays. Of course, on Fridays, everyone is too busy thinking about the weekend to think about work.
• If it weren’t for Mondays, everyone could have a perpetual weekend. While not much work would get done, people would be happier, doing what they want to do, rather than doing what they have to do.

So, why is it that this secret society is working so hard to ruin everyone’s Mondays? The only thing that makes sense is to try and get people to quit their jobs. Yes, this society is against the free enterprise, capitalistic system that makes our economy strong. They’re working to being down industry, making America a country of unemployed people who are dependent upon government aid to function.

This clearly must be a move on the parts of our foreign competitors. If the old Soviet Union was still around, I’d say that they were a prime candidate. However, with their demise, we must look elsewhere. It seems that it would have to be some of the Pacific Rim countries, who are benefiting from American companies sending our manufacturing jobs overseas.

Think of it. If the Chinese or Japanese can get us to quit being a productive society, they guarantee that we’ll buy their products. There won’t be any “buy American” campaigns, because there won’t be any American products to buy. All they have to do is get American’s to quit producing, and they guarantee their market dominance for the next 50 years or more. Quite a business strategy, isn’t it?

You have to realize that to stop working doesn’t mean that we’ll stop consuming. We’re the biggest society of consumers in the world. Our lives are built around consuming; we’re taught how to be consumers from the first moment we look at a television. So, of course, we’ll keep on consuming.

What’s that? How will we keep on consuming when we’re not working? Simple; credit cards. The average American already spends ten percent more than they earn. So, if you take away the income side of the equation, then we can manage to spend 110 percent of what we earn. Actually, it’ll be more than that, since we’ll have more time to consume, without all that pesky time lost working.

So, there you have it. Don’t fall for that conspiracy. Embrace your Mondays! Be part of the one percent that actually enjoys going to work! Don’t let foreign competition break you down!

Negativity Alarm

In case you haven’t noticed yet, the world in which we live is rather negative. In fact, it’s very negative. Many things are expressed in a negative way, rather than a positive one. Take traffic lights for instance, I’m sure you’ve noticed that they’re called “stop lights;” well, why not call them “go lights?” After all, that’s what we’re all waiting for, them to signal us that we can go, not that we can stop.

If you take a moment to look around, you’ll notice all kinds of things like this. It’s no wonder that there are so many negative, depressed people in the world; it’s almost like society is working overtime to make us that way.

On the flip side of the coin, we look suspiciously at people who are always smiling, happy and positive. There’s something about them, which makes us all wonder if they’re on something. Either that or we just figure that they’re out of touch with reality. After all, we all know that life is full of problems, so they can’t be all that happy, not without something to help them along.

In a recent in-depth study done by me, I looked at the lives of three people, my pet dog, the neighbor’s cat and four birds in our back yard. In this earth-shaking study, I discovered that negativity breeds negativity. That’s right, if you are around people who are negative all the time, you too will learn how to be negative. Every wondered why you’re so negative? It’s from listening to your mother tell you “No!” all those years you were growing up.

Yep, if your mother had just been more positive, you’d be so too. Of course, everyone else might think that you belong in a funny farm, but that’s their problem. It’s not your fault that they were born to negative mothers.

The obvious solution to this problem is to avoid negative people. Hindu gurus do this by climbing the highest mountain they can find, and hiding out in a cave up there. They spend their days meditating on nothing, because there’s nothing much that one can do hiding out in a cave. C’mon now, what would you do if you spent all your days in a cave in the mountains?

Well, for those of us that want a little more excitement in our lives than what cave life offers, we need a way to avoid negativity, while still living in the midst of society. That would mean that we need a negativity alarm. Since negative people put off a negative vibe, somebody should be able to develop an electronic device which alerts us at their pending arrival. That would give us the chance to duck out quickly, before they appear.

The same device could probably home in on positive people, providing us with a way of getting closer to those crazies who always see life through rose colored glasses. You know who I mean, the people who always have a smile on their faces, a joke on their lips and a laugh on their belly.

Of course, with so much negativity in the world, the alarm would probably be going off constantly. I think that could be overcome though. There would probably be a learning curve for new users, in which their device would help them identify the negative influences in their lives. Once those were identified, they could restructure their lives to avoid all those negative influences. Of course, that might require the aforementioned cave in the mountains.

I can see where businesses and schools would quickly be making rules to outlaw the use of such devices. Since students generally think that their teachers are negative, taking away their freedom to hang out with their friends, alarms would be going off constantly. Likewise in workplaces, since most people aren’t thrilled with their bosses. Managing would be extremely tricky when every employee would have an alarm to tell them when their boss was getting close. “Quick everyone, pretend to work, the boss is coming.”

Even with these restrictions, I still think this device would be worth inventing. People could avoid at least some of the negativity in their lives, like court dates, dentist appointments and bill collectors. Just think how much happier most people would be without those. 

Why not Return to Slavery?

Before reading this, please note, it is not a racist posting. I was thinking of the slavery back in the Roman times when I came up with this idea, not the slavery that existed here in the United States.

Today, more than ever, employers are struggling to find good workers to staff their companies. While there are a surfeit of people who appear to have the right qualifications, most of them seem to be lacking in one important area… that of working. They’ll come to work (once they finally get up), put in their time, and go through the motions. But, as for actually getting any work done, that’s another story.

They’d be glad to work if they just had the time, energy and interest. But, you see, they’ve got to keep up with their Facebook page, their friend’s tweets, e-mails, the latest YouTube posts and of course everyone who calls them while they’re at work. Just let them get through the next call, 14 e-mails, 3 videos and 47 tweets, then if nothing new shows up, they’ll be ready to work.

C’mon now, is that unreasonable? Why, that’s what they did all through school, so that’s what they’re trained to do. If you, as an employer, could just see the value of all that, you’d see that they’re definitely worthy of a promotion and a raise as well.

No wonder employers long for the days of slavery. Just think, to have employees which you could literally chain to their workstations, whipping them to produce more and more. Why, it would save a fortune on supervisory skills training, recruitment and even employee benefits. Just think of all the benefits in having a dedicated workforce, who weren’t always looking over the fence to see if the grass was greener on the other side.

There’s an advantage to the employee, or slave, as well. In today’s flaky economy, many are out of work or worried about losing their jobs. Why, slavery creates the greatest job security there is. This is a true lifetime employment contract; right up till the moment of death. Even Japan has given up the pretense of those contracts, but by the simple act of returning to slavery, we can have them going once again.

Think of the increase in productivity. As slave owners, business managers could take away people’s cell phones, e-mail, even Facebook accounts. No longer would all those distractions keep people from getting their work done, they could focus on their work, not on their smart phone.

Supervision of slaves is much simpler as well. All that is needed is a mean supervisor with a whip and a chair. For supervisory training, they could be sent to the circus to watch the lion tamer. After all, dealing with snarling cats is an awful lot like dealing with some employees, especially before they have their second cup of coffee.

So, to sum it up, you can see that there would be several advantages in returning to the good old days of slavery. It wouldn’t even affect the hearts and minds of the employees much as most already think of themselves as slaves and call their bosses their “slave driver.”