Payday? Again? Already?

First Posted 05-01-09

Yesterday at work, I went back to the mail room and found an envelope in my inbox. I opened it and was surprised to find a check made out to me. Every two weeks or so, at least twice a month, this same thing happens. It’s the coolest thing and it amazes me every time.

So here’s how it works. I go to this place every day. Well, actually it starts earlier than that.

Other people working for this place send me emails all day, a lot of them, starting long before I get there. It’s my job to fix problems; I’m the Professional Problem Solver. So they email me questions or problems, sometimes before I even think about getting out of bed. Buzz-buzz . . . buzz-buzz. I read the emails and decide what to do. I give the person on the other end an answer and we go from there.

Sometimes I get so many emails in a morning that I end up getting to the office really late. I know it doesn’t make much sense, but that makes me feel bad. Maybe it’s because I kind of like hanging out there. Not so much in the office, but just the whole company in general. It’s a great place to be and I get to hang out with smart and cool people who are interesting and sometimes funny. When I’m not there, who knows what I might be missing?

I actually spend quite a bit of time away from there as well. A lot of what they ask me to do involves driving for thirty minutes or an hour, looking at something that’s broken, or talking to someone who’s frustrated, solving another problem, and then driving back again to the office. I enjoy this part quite a bit too.

On these drives, I will answer the phone, but I usually won’t check emails as they come in. That’s against the law, you know – and probably dangerous too. So to use the time wisely, I listen to a lot of recorded books. I’ve listened to more than a hundred of them in the 11 years I have been hanging out at this place: novels, self help, scriptures, business topics, and whatever else I’m into at that moment.

Maybe you can see why this regular paycheck in my inbox is such a treat. In this time of economic recession, when so many of my friends are out of work, I not only have a job, I have one that suits me well, and that, dare I say, I like.

So as long as I get things done every day, make people happy, and solve lots of problems, somebody at the office keeps putting checks in my inbox, month after month after month.

It’s such a cool system.