So You Think You Work Hard and Long?

Whenever you might be tempted to moan about how hard you work or pat yourself on the back about not ever being off the job sick, consider these examples.

A couple Jimmy and Linda have just shut down their independent filling station and corner shop business here in our small town. They operated for 18 years, 7 days a week, more or less 365 days a year, 16 hours a day, starting around 5:00am and closing at 9pm. No weekends, statutory holidays, sick days, "mental health" days, or vacations for them! That amounts to 105,120 hours. Just for fun and comparison, in the government environment where I used to work 37.5 hours a week and three weeks vacation is the minimum, deducting statutory and other days off, the number of working days per year is 233. Per the barometer of government employees, in the space of 18 years Jimmy and Linda worked the equivalent of 60 years together or 30 years each.

Ottawa optometrist Dr Grenville Goodwin once casually mentioned to me as he peered into my eyes that he had just logged 50 years without missing one day due to sickness. Most people don't come close to working that many years.

Hats off to them. These folks have my utter admiration, lazy sod that I am in comparison. Thank goodness for people like them to keep our world turning reliably.