We Are Not Mining Coal – Example #1

Warriors, even as we sometimes vent the steam from our spleens, when we struggle against the soul-rending frustration of corporate life, when we piss and moan and weep and gnash teeth about our lost years wasted in Cubeland, it is essential that we occasionally step back and acknowledge the we indeed are not mining coal. We are not picking lettuce. We are not digging ditches. We are not Hoovering port-a-potties or swimming through sewers prying loose blockages.

We are of the White Collar tribe. We go home as clean as when we left.

And sometimes, this life can bring moments of sublime pleasure.

One example is this…The Expense Account Dinner, a meal in a nice restaurant that costs about five times what you’d normally pay for a dinner out of your own pocket. Thank you Expense Account Gods, we appreciate the premium steak, the top notch Indian food, the Sushi that was still swimming about five minutes ago.

Even better, give thanks for the dinners spent with extravagant senior executives who like to live well, who are rich and like to eat even richer when the company is picking up the tab. I had no idea what a hundred-dollar bottle of wine tasted like until my first senior executive dinner.

True, I didn’t taste every dollar of that one hundred. But that didn’t stop me from saying, “Ooo, that really is good.”

Thank you, Expense Account Gods, for the bounty you’ve put before us on white table clothes, eaten with real silver, and served by attractive waitress who are also part time models.