I was visiting an old friend and his mother when I learned he has a love/hate relationship with stone soup, but no respect for little red hens.
And that, dear readers, is modern America’s debate in a nutshell.
I may have skipped to the end there. Instead of buying the lede, I think I put the punch up front.
My friend is disgruntled at work, but not WITH work. Disgruntled isn’t the right word. Like a massive swath of America, he is feeling that thing we misname “burnout.”
It is more of a systemic creeping ennui. It lacks a tangible focus and people attribute it to being dissatisfied at work. Then they choose to do their jobs with less effort and no pride, as if work is some kind of soul-crushing chore they roll their eyes at, sigh, and shuffle through while dragging their feet, hoping someone else will do the hard parts.
He told me he just doesn’t really like his job anymore and he’s “kind of over it.”
“I always paraphrase Red Forman in these matters,” I said. “They don’t call it happy fun time. It’s WORK!”
“You’re right,” he said, “and it’s not really the job itself. That’s why I’m not putting out résumés to look for something else. It would be like, ‘How long until that one runs its course and I’m back to right back here again?’ I think maybe I’m burned out on capitalism.”
I told him I can see that.
“Pretty much everyone I say that to tells me they get it,” he said.
“Clearly you misunderstood me,” I said. “What I meant by, ‘I can see that,’ was that can I see how YOU would feel that way. I love me some capitalism, brother!”
“Well, you’re at the top of your hierarchy.”
“That doesn’t matter. You make more way money than I do. That doesn’t matter either. I’ve always loved capitalism. There’s an equation to it. I could write the algorithm for it. I do the things. I get lights. The cats get food. If I do the things better, there’s extra. I earned that. I’m like the hen in that kids’ story.”
“What story is that?”
His mom, who spent her career as an elementary school teachers asked, “Do you mean The Little Red Hen?”
“Yes,” I said. Then to my friend: “Do you know that one?”
“No.”
“No? But you’re HER son. How do you not know this? Okay, look, there’s this hen and she’s growing wheat, but nobody wants to help. She asked them to help plant it and they won’t. She asks them to tend it and harvest it and they all say—”
“So this is an allegory about patience again?”
“No. No it’s not. It’s about how they all want some of her bread because it smells great, but she won’t give them any. They didn’t help, so she gets to eat all the tasty bread herself because she did all the work.”
“That’s not how you make friends.”
“No, Mr. Snarky, it’s how you make bread when everyone else is too lazy to help. Then you get to eat bread.”
“Did they ever teach you the stone soup story?” he asked.
“Yes, but what’s that got to do with it? Nobody wants bread soup.”
When my friend was in school, his teacher didn’t just tell the story of stone soup. The class made it together. The teacher brought in a stone and a pot, and all the kids brought in something for the soup.
“Two things,” I said. “One: you couldn’t do that now. No one is letting a teacher make their kids eat out of a pot with a rock in it. ‘Where did that rock come from? What kind of rock is it? That rock is literally just compressed dirt; you can’t make my kid eat dirt.’ And two: [turning to his mom] how much did they pay teachers back then that they had to eat stone soup?”
“It was about cooperation,” my friend said, clearly a little exasperated. “We all came together and brought a little something and then we all got to eat soup.”
His mom asked, “And how was the soup?”
“Not good,” he said.
We all laughed.
“Was your teacher a bad cook?” I asked.
“It wasn’t her fault, but it was just bland and watery and … well … not good soup. I remember thinking that one of my classmates should have brought some spices – at least some salt.”
His mom said, “And I’m sure there were some kids who didn’t bring anything.”
“Maybe those were the salt kids,” he said.
“See! That’s my point! In my red-blooded American hen story, I got good bread. You’re stuck over there with disappointing socialist soup. How’s that working out for you?”
“Not great, but—”
I quickly excused myself because I had a newspaper to run.
As Red Forman said in That 70s Show, “Work is work. You don’t show up late, you don’t make excuses, and you don’t not work. If it wasn’t work, they wouldn’t call it work. They’d call it super, wonderful, crazy fun time. Or skippity-doo.”
The Reporter involves a lot of work, but I’m not going to let a committee, a corporation, or a wave of socialism water it down and forget to add the good bits. The spirits of my daughter and father would never forgive me if I did.
Hamilton County, you deserve the good bread.
Dear Indianapolis, my old friend has some soup for you.
Stu Clampitt loves both wisdom and efficiency. After nearly 30 years of chasing wisdom, he has not caught much, which means he is neither wise nor efficient. You can reach him by email at News@ReadTheReporter.com.