This Page Intentionally Left Blank -Just Like the Paychecks of the Workers by Robert S. Swiatek - HTML preview

If priests can’t be married, didn’t the apostles have wives? (I won’t accept the argument that Judas wasn’t married – he had a tough time getting dates, let alone any kind of commitment. Who can blame any woman? They heard about him.) For you religious scholars reading this, I’m kidding about that apostle, but not about the others. Some time ago, a friend of mine was ordained a priest and he met a woman. That is not unusual – clergy are allowed to talk to the opposite sex – except that he fell in love with her. He decided to alter his life and left the church and married her, since the Catholic Church wouldn’t allow him to tie the knot. Many say you can’t have two masters – an argument that I don’t accept for not having married priests. Anyone who enters into matrimony has at least two masters! My friend eventually became a minister in the Presbyterian Church, so he is still a preacher of the faith.

Married priests have been around for some time. Celibacy wasn’t introduced in the first century, so spouses were in the rectory – or wherever they resided – for many years. Since the times change, the church must do so as well, although these ideas need not be drastic and radical. I don’t read many novels but one Sunday at Mass, Father Robert Wood recommended a book by Morris West, The Clowns of God. I must have liked the book and especially the writer – that usually follows – since I have read over twenty of his books, all fiction. West is very insightful and progressive in his thinking, even if I found it in his novels. I can only recommend that other religious people – clergy and lay men and women alike – see what he has to offer in his writing.

I mentioned that clergy advise married couples, so allowing the former to get married would certainly give them more insight into that sacrament. If this change doesn’t happen, what will probably take place is such a shortage that eventually those in the sacristy and sanctuary will be the lay people, deacons and sisters, replacing those with the collars. Of course, this is what the church really is – all of us serving others. However, why not allow priests to marry today, thus eliminating this crisis in the future?

I mentioned retirement in the church and many can’t do so because they have no pension. I doubt that the diocese pays into social security so priests and nuns can’t file at sixty-five. However, in their old age they are taken care of by the order, which in turn is supported by donations from the parishioners. There is a tradeoff as retirement age gets delayed to the point that clergy in their sixties still work, even if their hours are reduced somewhat. So if they worked sixty hours a week before, does that mean that their workload will now be only forty hours? That is not my idea of retirement.

As far as women priests goes, if my brother agrees that priests should be married, maybe I’ll not push the issue of females saying Mass. Naturally, that will upset many women. Of course, there are ministers of that gender in many churches – I met one at a “stop the war” demonstration in September 2006 and she offered eloquent and inspiring thoughts. We have nuns and mother superiors and even sisters who think they run the parish – I’ll write anything for a laugh. Why not allow women priests? They make up over half the church and weren’t they the majority of the spectators at Calvary when Christ was hanging on the cross? The disciples went AWOL and they weren’t even in the National Guard.

All throughout history, women have been denigrated as second-class citizens. In the past the nuns did much of the instruction of the children in the schools. I don’t recall any teachers that didn’t look like penguins in my parochial school days. Women take care of the sanctuary of the church all year long and are hard pressed during Christmas and Easter seasons. They also cook the meals for the pastor and clean the rectory. If we don’t allow women priests, at least acknowledge the fact that the female population played an important role in the church throughout the ages.

The clergy are people just like the doctors, nurses, consultants, coal miners and mob bosses. Each can be overworked but nuns and priests have further difficulties. The obvious shortage and low remuneration enter into the equation, despite the fact that their room and board is usually taken care of. They are still human beings and remedies for them having better lives are no different than for the people in the pews. 15. Health care

Doctors and nurses are another great example of workaholics, some by choice. This occupation works people to death and not only do those in the profession suffer health problems, on too many occasions their patients don’t make out too well either. You’ve probably heard of individuals who had the wrong leg amputated or the patient whose gall bladder was taken when he came in for a colonoscopy. The latter gave up something two days in a row when that wasn’t prescribed. Without great health care, a society can only wither and die.

My cousin is a health care provider and she gets off from work for four days in succession. The bad news is that she puts in twelve-hour shifts for three days in a row. As you can see, this is a few more hours than the goal of the thirty-hour workweek. She is not alone as many nurses and doctors are trapped in fifty-hour weeks and more. This is due to the shortage in the field. Some love what they are doing so much that they can’t take themselves away from the job. They are to be applauded, but it would be more beneficial to hire more help and give these people raises while reducing their hours. In their zeal, these doctors and nurses may have involuntarily become workaholics.

As with any occupation, there are those who put in the long hours for many reasons, one of which is greed. This is not good for them or the patients, as I have already stated. Just as a consultant can’t be that productive in an environment where she is asked to be on the job for fifty hours a week, the same applies to those in the health care field. Don’t believe a doctor who tells you otherwise. By now you should realize that doctors don’t know everything! I also think that because of the high stress levels in hospitals, even a forty-hour workweek is too much.

You won’t be able to get assistance and relief for the help if there are no people to fill the positions. To entice more people to the field, there is not much need to raise the salaries of the doctors, since they seem to be doing fine in that regard, but don’t overlook the fact that they do have high insurance costs. Reducing their workload should result in their being more effective, resulting in fewer lawsuits. Raising the pay of the nurses as well as limiting their hours should make a big difference, with more recruits.

There are a few other things that need to be done as well. The first has to do with revamping health insurance. With skyrocketing costs and mismanagement, you may just as well have no plan. Something needs to be done to limit these expenses. I present what has to be done without the actual solution. All I know is that what we have now does not help those people who need health care; the employees are overworked and stressed out and there is too much waste and fraud in the system. Changes need to be made.

The people in the system have to pitch in too. For example, some with health insurance will visit the doctor at the first sign of a cold or when they break a bone. Well, maybe the fractures need to be checked out, but too many patients feel that since they have coverage, they should use it. This attitude only indicates that someone else who needs assistance may be waiting longer for care with a more serious concern. There is also the strain placed on health care people, as if their days weren’t long enough already.

The one suffering needs to have some knowledge of medicine and the human body so as to limit visits. After my first cancer, I wanted nothing to do with researching the causes. After the passage of time, I got more involved and this reaction is only to be expected. Nonetheless, each of us has to be more responsible about his own health, as well as that of her beloved. This means that we should probably not visit McDonalds every day for dinner. Instead see the movie, Super Size Me and read the companion book, Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the all-American Meal by Eric Schlosser. You’ll never eat at a fast food restaurant again. The book was also made into a nondocumentary movie of the same name.

I’m not telling you to change your diet to soy burgers and rice cakes. In fact, you may want to limit your soy intake since it may not be that great a substitute for anything. As far as rice cakes go, if you haven’t figured out that they don’t taste much better than Styrofoam – which you should avoid – this warning should save you the expense of trying them. I’ll never be a vegan, but I have leaned more towards the practice of vegetarianism, which is not a cult and you don’t have to contact my family since I haven’t been abducted as I write this. I still eat meat, but not as much as I used to.

Moderation is the secret to enjoying food as opposed to having to get an angioplasty after sitting down to a thirty-two ounce steak. This small change in diet should limit your doctor visits to checkups rather than trips to the emergency room. After my encounters – if you haven’t already figured it out – I really don’t care to have surgery of any kind, if it can be avoided. That should be your goal too, and it will benefit the doctors and nurses as well as people in hospital beds or those waiting for one.

Another aspect of medicine that my system isn’t too thrilled about is taking antibiotics and drugs. While recovering after surgery, I had the pleasure of trying a few drugs to reduce some of the pain as well as to prevent other problems that may have resulted. Demerol and Darvoset may offer relief after surgery, but they are not without other difficulties. I can vouch for that because the pill I took at home may have seemed to help provide some relief, but at the same time I had the worst case of constipation in my life. It wasn’t worth taking the painkiller to get that result. This seems to be true about most drugs. Even if it appears that some pill really works without side effects, it is very possible that somewhere down the road the user will have to pay. This is besides the premiums.

I was introduced to Tequin, Levaquin and Cipro in the year 2004. You will notice that the first letter of each represents TLC – I really hate acronyms. In each case when I took the tablet, I didn’t get constipated, but just the opposite. It wasn’t a fun time. Maybe I should have taken some Darvoset at the same time and hoped for a standoff, something I would have preferred – in my case standing would have been a blessing! After my adventures, I heard that Cipro – the mother of all antibiotics, appropriately enough – was used against anthrax. Those are three nasty pills that I hope to never, ever see again.

In the summer of 2006, I had a minor case of gout. I visited my doctor but didn’t see him. Instead his assistant prescribed an antibiotic, cephalexin – not to be used unless necessary – and two anti-inflammatories, colchicine and indomethacin. The documentation accompanying the pills wasn’t very assuring. One recommended contacting my local poison center in case of an overdose while another warned of the risk of serious and sometimes fatal heart problems. I didn’t feel like taking any of this stuff, despite my big toe troubles, but did wind up taking the absolute minimum of each antiinflammatory after four meals. I am not convinced that any of these drugs had any effect since my pain seemed to be disappearing by the time I started ingesting the tablets.

Drugs or surgery may be needed at times, but too many doctors never consider alternatives. They seem to be nothing more than cut and run people – they do surgery and run to the next patient. They also make you run to the pharmacist. Our society is so tuned in to the television culture of drug advertising that we are out of touch with our own bodies. The knowledge of all the possible side effects should get us to make some changes in our lives and use drugs only as a very last resort. Even if some chemical can prevent some initial suffering, remember that getting through it without the pill may result in a great deal less pain later. Too many side effects from drugs just aren’t worth it.

As I’ve said, working too many hours causes stress and many health problems, which in turn generate problems for doctors and nurses since they have to work longer hours. Even if we are not overcome in any way from the long days at the office, the situation may lead us to unhealthy eating habits – such as stopping in at Burger King – which then can get you to the medicine cabinet for some drug that you shouldn’t have needed in the first place. I used to love the Whopper, but you won’t catch me in any of those places again.

I hope I have convinced you that we have to remove the stress from the workplace. Bringing it home from the shop or cubicle and releasing it on loved ones should never be an option. Keeping it bottled up inside isn’t good either, as it will result in health problems, which wind up affecting the nurses and doctors. People who are in this frazzled state too often settle in front of the tube in order to relax. I can assure you that even though people fall asleep watching reality TV and baseball, that medium was never – and more so today – meant to relax anyone.

Overworked people – any color collar or no collar at all – also turn to drugs for relief, many of which are illegal. I can’t recommend the legal ones, even alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. None will help you in the long run. You may feel relieved or numb at first, but there will be bills and hell to pay later. You can see why we all need legislation for a thirty-hour workweek, an increase in the minimum wage and a boost in the salaries for the others.
16. Where did I find the time?

On many occasions I talk to retirees, and so many mention that they enjoy their new life and wished they had left the work force sooner. A few wonder where they ever found the time to actually have a full-time job. I asked the same question since I hung up my consulting shoes. If you are wondering, I only had a couple pair, but one contractor I knew had shoes to match every suit he wore. I recall he had a red suit, blue one and green one. He could wear any clothes he wanted since he was six-foot-five and weighed two hundred fifty pounds.

I finished writing my workaholics’ guidebook in August 2001. On December 31st of that year, I retired because I felt that if I hadn’t, I would have been a hypocrite. I had enough of the business world and now I just write about it. I’m retired without a paycheck, but for me, there aren’t enough hours in the day. Somehow, I am a great deal happier and many people who took the identical route feel the same. Some never retire because they either love their work, the money or they wouldn’t survive if they had no office to go to each day. The last two indicate a sad state of affairs, but you could retire and then wind up bored. There are too many individuals who wind up like that – they just can’t cope with the free time. It is unfortunate that people can’t relax and remove themselves from the rat race. I’ve known many people who fit this mold.

If I compare my life today to when I was schlepping off to Rochester on various contracts, a few things haven’t changed that much. I still am involved with computer programming since I maintain my own web site. I haven’t escaped email and the Internet – I wish I could. Even when I received a paycheck regularly from consulting, I was writing; now I’m still doing it but dedicating more time to my books. The good part is I don’t worry about snow and commuting anymore. I also have a great deal less apprehension on Sunday evenings, as I need not worry about getting up the next day at some ungodly hour. The mileage on my car is much less than during my contracting times and that means less frustration on the highways. I don’t miss any of that, at all.

Of course, no one can retire unless she plans it in some way. I mentioned the consultant who favored various-colored suits and matching shoes but I didn’t know him that well. I did hear that he got the big bucks when he was doing his thing. He also had no qualms about spending either, so much so that he came back begging for another contract later when he ran out of funds. He violated one of the first rules of consulting: plan for days during a recession when there may not be work for a while. I saw a few of those stretches over the years.

Each of us needs to think about our future relative to retirement. This will mean using that finance tracker I discussed earlier. If a raise is forthcoming, you may not want to get out your credit card and buy that indoor swimming pool before you see the increase. Heck, even after you get your paycheck with more cash, you may want to consider paying down one of your credit cards instead of heading over to the bar and buying everyone drinks.

I’m not implying you should survive on a diet of red beans and rice. By the way, you can find a recipe for that dish in my cookbook. I like that combination of starch and protein, but you’ll get sick of it if you have it day in and day out. Also remember that if you dine at fancy restaurants too often, it will postpone your retirement date. You could also get gout, a form of arthritis. I had a case of the latter in the summer of 2006, according to my doctor, although the symptoms resembled gout. You’ll also be in the work force longer with overenthusiastic participation in Boxing Day. Perhaps I was blessed to get to the point where I absolutely abhor shopping. If you don’t go out to the mall, you can always spend money by tuning in to the Shopping Network or going online, which I do, but sparingly.

You can read finance magazines that tell you when you can retire, based on your savings as well as your living habits. With little invested and living high off the hog, your retirement may not come for some time, even when you turn sixty-five. For quite a while I subscribed to Changing Times magazine, which then became Kipplingers Personal Finance Magazine. My only complaint – I cancelled the magazine a few months ago – was that it seemed to cater to the rich. Since the majority of the people aren’t in that category, the publication may not be that useful for most of us.

Less than two years after exiting the business world – at least from a paying job – I sold my house. Materialism will hold down people so that they can’t retire, especially when it comes to home ownership. Recently someone inquired if I missed the house and I said that I didn’t. Obviously, there are aspects that I cared not to give up, but as is always the case, there are tradeoffs. The home had three bedrooms but I could only recall one instance in which all the beds were used, including the sofa bed in the living room. That was after a party.

The house bordered an empty lot and I tried to buy that property but didn’t succeed. When I sold the house, I realized that I really didn’t need that extra land after all. People who buy 6,000 square feet homes might eventually feel the same way. The space might be nice, but you’ll need furniture to fill those extra areas and your mortgage will be higher than for a smaller place. You’ll also spend a great deal of time cleaning and maintaining the place or else opening your wallet to pay someone to do the work. All this will postpone your retirement.

What you collect can have a great impact on when you can leave your job. If you collect antiques – cars or furniture – you will need more room as well as more money. If you are into all the latest overrated high tech gadgets, the same applies and this can only mean a delay in retirement. One of the things I love to do is view movies, but I don’t collect them. That’s because I generally view a movie once since there are so many available. You may be able to get DVDs from the library and it won’t cost a cent, unless you fail to return them on time. Buying means you’ll have to work more to pay for the flicks but you’ll also need more shelving to store them. That will cost you as well, unless you build it yourself, but then you’ll have more work.

Spending something seemingly insignificant as a onecent piece results in nickels, dimes and eventually dollars coming out of your wallet. You need not account for the pennies and nickels, but you have to worry about the dollars. I again emphasize the financial spreadsheet to monitor where the money goes.

As you can see, in order to retire, you need to think about it as soon as you enter the work force. I have already mentioned the Individual Retirement Account, which everyone should take advantage of, no excuses. If you are self-employed, you need to invest in Keoghs, profit sharing plans or whatever people call them. They have so many names, but they’re nothing more than your own pension or retirement plan. If you are employed in a full-time position, you can only hope that your employer will take care of your future. Too often, people thought their employer was looking out for them after they turned sixty-five, but as corporations experienced tough times in keeping up the huge profit margins to pay off upper management and the shareholders, they felt the only option was rolling back benefits. As a result, employees lost some or all of their pension plan. This would have given them the benefits they deserved when they wanted them.
17. Nickel and dimed

The above three words are the beginning of the title of a book by Barbara Ehrenreich, who also wrote Bait and Switch: the (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream. The full title of the companion book is Nickel and Dimed: on Not Getting by in America. Both works are hilarious and insightful and deal with work, the subject of this book. I highly recommend each. Dealing with the financial spreadsheet, I stated that you don’t have to enter data to the penny; you can just enter dollar amounts. However, if you use credit card receipts and checks for the entries on this document, you already have the expenditure to the nearest cent, so why not use it? Besides, if you lose enough pennies, they add up to a dollar. I’m sorry for mentioning that so often, but it’s definitely worth repeating.

You may have heard of the grocery store scam in the 1970s. If not, it happened when some creative checkout clerks used the subtotal key when they were doing their thing up front. Let’s say that a customer with a full grocery cart followed another with a very small order. The worker would ring up the first order, but only subtotal it. The purchaser would pay for the goods and leave with her receipt. Then, when the larger order was calculated, the total would include the amount of the order preceding it – that which had been subtotaled.

The first amount may have only been two dollars, but the checkout clerk could pocket this amount and continue his thievery with more orders in the same manner, thus enhancing his wallet at the end of the day and ripping off the consumer. The customer with the large order probably wouldn’t check to see if he had gotten ripped off. It was a grand old scheme, while it lasted. As you can guess, the subtotaling doesn’t happen anymore. Now people get ripped off because of the missing intelligence of the help. Of course, computers can also be simply programmed to do robbing from time to time, and who would know the difference? In either case, the buyer pays more than he should have.

I went to the same grocery store twice within a twoweek period and on each visit I was charged more for a few items than I should have been. Quite a while ago, I was charged some outrageous amount like seventy-nine cents for some shrimp that should have been $7.90. I didn’t discover the undercharge until I got home and didn’t report it. I also didn’t go back to the store when I was overcharged recently on those two occasions. Eventually, all this probably evens out but I think by this time the food business owes me.

I generally don’t check if the transaction is what it should be, but on many occasions I do a mental calculation at the register to get a rough idea of the bill – I did major in mathematics so that is not that difficult. Once in a while, I’m really close in my guess and not long ago, I came up with the exact amount – that’s downright scary! On a few other occasions, my bill was more than I anticipated by a long shot. When I finally did the checking at home, in most cases my mental calculator just needed a battery, but every so often, I have paid more than I should have.

The same thing happens in department stores as we get nickel and dimed to death. By that I mean we pay more than we should. With technology the way it is, this shouldn’t happen, but the people working behind the counter enter into the picture. Even if the computer is wrong, you have to be aware that it is programmed and controlled by humans, who can make mistakes, even if they happen to be honest ones.

Over the years, it seems to me that many businesses are making a living by overcharging for items. They figure that if the customer complains, they will reimburse him and apologize for the error. There’s no harm done and they could even wind up with extra cash in the till. Actually, customers can stop frequenting these places and head over to a different store to make their purchase. That is what I recommend. On one occasion, I used my credit card at a service station for a repair and I was charged double. I fixed the problem by refusing to pay for any part of the bill and the merchant accepted that.

Pennies are important, but some people get really carried away because they are always counting them. These are the “humans” that can be classified simply as cheap. At the other end of the spectrum we can find those who spend every last cent they earn and more. I have known both classes of individual. You may want to avoid hanging out with either of these types. As in most things, we need a balance. The brilliant cerebral comedian, Steven Wright, pointed out that there’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the dock looking like an idiot. Similarly, there is a small distinction between being a miser and being thrifty. Our job is to save money rather than go out of the way to save a nickel.

Some people will drive fifteen miles out of their way to save a dollar for gasoline. In the process, the gas they used cost two dollars, but they didn’t calculate that. Then there is the individual who returns to the food store – which I didn’t do – and gets a quarter refund because of an overcharge. Unfortunately, he gets home much later since the trip causes him to run out of gas. What about the “handyman” who decides to get his energy supply for his wood stove and buys a chainsaw to cut down some trees. In the process, he gets the wood but damages his house and winds up paying hundreds of dollars for the repair. His insurance doesn’t cover bumbling lumberjacks!

We get nickel and dimed when people scam us and on too many occasions we would really be grateful if it only involved those few coins, but unfortunately it usually involves big bucks. This is going to be a really long story so you may want to get a beer. On second thought, make it a coffee, as I don’t want you to fall asleep. I won’t preview how it turns out so you will have to read all the way to the end of the episode.

Education that comes later is better than none at all or as they say, “Experience is the best teacher but it’s a hell of a way to learn.” In January 2005, I received an email from a Snidely Whiplash (not his real name.) He had been to my web site and thought that I could benefit by using his site to sell my books. I had to put information on his site about my books along with images of the covers. This would give others an opportunity to see and buy quantities of books from me, at a discount, of course. The fee was $340.

I have always believed in doing things big. Why sell books individually when it’s much more beneficial to sell a hundred copies to someone else who then sells them for you, one at a time. You make less money per book, but in the process you sell more books and get more exposure. Overall, you wind up with more money in your pocket. Because of this feeling, I decided that his fee wasn’t that much and figured that I would give it a try.

Snidely’s company name was TYM, which now that I think of it stands for Take Your Money. I should have known better. I used my Borders Credit Card to charge the fee and proceeded to add the data necessary to the TYM site, including the images for my book covers. I had been on the phone a couple times with Snidely and he seemed decent enough. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see his mustache because I didn’t have a picture phone. That would have been another good clue.

A few days after my data was on TYM, I returned to the site and noticed that the images of the book covers were distorted and I figured, not ideal for selling books. I emailed my mustachioed business associate and mentioned this. He didn’t respond so I sent another email. I got no reply so I called him but didn’t talk to him, so I left a message. He didn’t answer that message either. I was frustrated so I decided to log on to the TYM web site, figuring maybe someone remedied my problem. I made a mistake entering the web site name so I did a google search and what I found was very interesting. It was a list of complaints against TYM. You may be able to find some bad things about a company by doing just what I did. The Internet is not without flaws and lies, but there is a great deal of information that you can use to your advantage. Just do so before you get burned, not after, like I did.

At this point, I came to the conclusion that I had wasted my money. I checked out some of these complaints and these victims weren’t happy either. I recalled my attempts to reach Snidely and I couldn’t come to any conclusion other than that I had been scammed. I found the charge information for TYM on my credit card bill and saw a phone number for the company, so I dialed it. I got the message, “The person you are trying to reach is unavailable,” and that was the end of the call. I thought that was peculiar. Wouldn’t a phone that rang without stopping accomplish the same mission? It wouldn’t cost as much or frustrate the caller, either.

I called the credit car