The Friday feelings

For most people Friday is the day before the weekend and is a day spent thinking “woohoo! Two days off coming up”. As I work Saturdays Friday is less of a great day for me. I miss not having a weekend. Having a day off then going back in the next day and then having Sunday off is not the same as two days back to back.

But well…it is what it is.

I know there are people out there who would say I’m lucky to have a job and ought to be grateful but these are the same people who think work is the be-all and end-all. And it isn’t or shouldn’t be.

The other day people at work were discussing the lottery. It is the dream of most, isn’t it? To suddenly find themselves with a good chunk of money to do with as they please. Workers discuss what they’d do given such money.

“Would you go back to work the next day if you won the lottery?”

“Would you tell your boss to shove it?”

“Would you leave the country and go live somewhere else?”

I’ve heard such questions being posed everywhere and I’ve heard people say that they’d still go back to work even if they won a million quid. But would they, really?

And what does that say about people if they would?

I’ve heard people interviewed on the lottery programme in the past – middle-aged cleaning ladies who said they were planning on going back to work despite their wins because they loved their job and all their mates were there.

I’m guessing that if they did go back to work the next day they’d have given it a week or so before changing their minds and quitting. How soon before their so-called mates discovered their win and started coming to them cap-in-hand?

Would I return to work the day after I’d won the lottery?

Quitting or carrying on with my job would depend on how much money I’d won. Less than a million and it probably wouldn’t be doable. A reasonable house in this country can cost upwards of a quarter mil and then you have to think about bills and extras. For me it would have to be a million at least to quit. I don’t have expensive tastes. I wouldn’t be going mad with my money, buying fur coats, diamond necklaces and fancy cars that I can’t drive. A nice house would be my biggest investment. I reckon I could get a perfectly reasonable one for up to half a mil and then the rest of the money I’d live on for the rest of my life.

If I won such money I wouldn’t quit my job immediately. I don’t think that sensible and being a suspicious person I would not believe I had actually won until I saw the money in my account and had actually used it to buy something. Only then would I quit. And despite the temptation to do so with flair, flouncing out while telling my boss to shove his job where the sun don’t shine, I wouldn’t. If I’d still been in a previous job I would have enjoyed that as the job had become hell on earth, but my current job is, for the moment ok, and my boss is quite a nice chap.

As nice as he is and as much as I quite enjoy having a laugh and a chat with my colleagues I wouldn’t continue in this job if I won a hefty chunk of dosh.

When I hear ordinary working people say they would remain in their jobs I tend to think several things.

One: I’m sure that is laudable. You like your job, your colleagues and you believe in working hard. We live in a country where those who work are considered somehow morally better than those who don’t. Or rather that those people are better than those who are on benefits. We don’t seem to have a problem with the non-working rich. It’s the non-working poor that seem to disgust this nation.

Two: That’s sad. You have so little in your life besides your job that you’d rather keep working even when you don’t have to.

Three: That’s so selfish. Yes, selfish. Unless you are doing a truly important job – you’re a life-saving doctor, fireman, nurse etc then remaining in your job is a form of greed in my book. If you are working in an ordinary job, something that, let’s face it, anyone could do with the minimum of training, you should not be holding onto that position. There are people out there in desperate need of a job and you are keeping one from them that you don’t need. You should give up that job to someone who truly needs it. To keep holding onto it because you want somewhere to go each day and you’d miss chatting with your mates is just selfish. If those people are truly your friends surely they’d still be so if you left the job? In fact more so if they knew you’d won the lottery. You’d find yourself with more friends than you could handle if you revealed that little nugget. You want somewhere to go each day, something to give you purpose, to keep you active and social? There’s all kinds of places you could go, groups you could join. You don’t need to go to work to get that.

As far as I’m concerned if you’re working in an ordinary job and you win the lottery you have a duty to relinquish your role to someone who needs it more than you now do. Heck, buy the company if you really want to remain connected to it and the people. You could be the one who hires those needful people.

If I won the lottery right now, while in this particular job, I wouldn’t quit until I was certain I actually did have that money and then I’d give in my notice. I wouldn’t just quit. I would give my boss a chance to find someone else to replace me, stay long enough to help train them up if asked and then I’d leave and do so resisting the urge to flounce out. It wouldn’t be sensible to burn a bridge that way. What if in a few years time I lost all that money and the nice house and had to go back?

All this is just musings and an interesting topic of discussion. I don’t actually think I’ll win the lottery. People like me never win stuff like that. I’m the kind of person that wins a tenner on the lottery and that for me is my biggest win! I’m not sure what I’d actually do or think or feel if I was suddenly told I’d won a million or ten or fifty! A million I could cope with. It would be exciting while being a “normal” sort of number, something that could be handled. Not too overwhelming. I’ve spent my life being poor. If I won fifty million I’m not sure what I would do with that, how I’d handle it. I have no experience of those types of numbers.

A million would be an easy number to cope with.

There are people out there for whom a million quid would be nothing, chicken feed, pocket money, yet they would begrudge someone like me that cash. Rich people think all the money in the world should be theirs. It sits in their bank accounts achieving nothing. What does it do for Musk to have an extra million in his account? He wouldn’t even notice it. He could give half of his fortune away and wouldn’t even notice that it was gone. It’s not as though he even has that money, physically speaking. He’s not swimming around in it like Scrooge McDuck. It’s not paper and coins that he can touch and smell and roll about in naked! It’s all ones and zeros on a computer screen and most of it he’ll not live long enough to spend so why not spread it about to people who might actually appreciate it?

Because the little guy doesn’t deserve it?

Does the big guy?

No one deserves that money. No one in this world actually deserves anything. People just get what they get, and mostly it is down to luck, being in the right place at the right time and having the right set of circumstances coming together.

Think about the people who win the lottery – the big winners. Do they “deserve” that win? Did they do something to earn it? Was it their good characters that made them worthy? The god of good fortune saw them buying a ticket and went “oh yes, Mrs Smith is a fine lady, volunteers at the WI and bakes cookies for orphans”, “Mr Brown is a member of the Salvation Army and worked as a plumber for forty years so he deserves a win”.

I remember the year that a convicted rapist won big on the lottery. Did he “deserve” that? Lots of people at the time thought “aw, hell no!” But was he deserving? Who decides: me, you, society…God?

Am I deserving of winning the lottery? If not why not?

People on benefits have won the lottery and others begrudged that. “How dare they!”, “they don’t deserve it”, “they didn’t earn that money.”

Urm, it’s the lottery. No one “earns” a lottery win. You buy a ticket and if you’re lucky your numbers come up. The idea that the hard working man “deserves” that win more than the unemployed man is just ridiculous. The lottery isn’t a job. You don’t work hard to deserve that win. You handed a quid over to the shopkeeper. That’s all you did.

And if the unemployed man wins the lottery isn’t that to everyone’s benefit? He can now get off the dole so the taxes of the hard working man are now no longer being used to “prop” him up.

Isn’t it really just mean-spirited jealousy that leads to people hating the poor for getting anything nice? Saying they don’t deserve it is just stupid. They no more or less deserve it than you do. Than anyone does.

I “deserve” or don’t deserve a win as much or as less as the next guy. And, of course, I’d love that win. I’d prefer though to earn that money through my writing. I would consider that a reward for all my hard work and would feel like more of an achievement than simply winning it. Though I wouldn’t say no if I did win it rather than earn it.

And whether I earned it or won it my response would be the same. Buy house, quit day job, live quietly and contentedly continuing to write my books.

My life would not change in a vast way. Sure, I’d buy a few nice trinkets and take a few holidays, see something of the world and try to broaden my horizons but essentially my life would go on the same as it has been. I’d write and read. I’d do the garden on weekends. Only now, I’d have a nice garden to tend and not some strip of crappy council grass out the back. I wouldn’t be roaring down the street in a Lamborghini and having wild drug parties in a twenty-bed mansion or hanging out with celebs. Money or not that isn’t me. I’d still buy stuff from second-hand shops and go in Iceland for my cheese! Unless they do the same brand in M&S I see no reason go on there. Though maybe I’d buy that cheese direct from the dairy instead. Urm, there’s a thought. If I won more than a million maybe I’d buy the dairy. Maybe I’d buy the factory where they make Pringles and find out what they’ve done to ruin my once favourite cheese and onion flavour and get them to undo it! Ha.