The Donut Is A Lie!

My older brother started a new job last week. And he's not too happy about his commute. At his last position, he was 6 miles from the office, so he only spent about 20 minutes in his car each day. But now, he drives 35 to 40 minutes each way. Which means he puts almost 250 miles on his car each week. So with the extended hours and longer commute, he's away from home about 12 hours a day. So considering what he had, he's unhappy about it.

Well, I encouraged him to try to find the silver lining for the new job. There's always some perk that you can focus on that makes it worthwhile. Well, he didn't get a pay raise, he spends an extra $200 per month on gas, he spends an extra $100 per month on toll roads, and the area he works in smells like a poot (sorry, that's what my kids call flatulence). So it's hard to find the silver lining. But he's a generally positive person, so I figured he could do it.

Well, on his first day he saw boxes of donuts everywhere. It seemed there was some kind of unspoken Donut Monday rule, and he was thrilled about that. There were about 6 boxes of donuts throughout the office and there were still some left over at the end of the day. Obviously, he was excited. So much so, that all the other stuff that he found out during the week (broken vending machines, slow elevators, disgusting coffee, invasive cavity searches), he dismissed as trivial. Because, hey… Donut Mondays!

Well he found out today that there is no such thing as Donut Monday. It was just a fluke that all the donuts appeared last week. So despite his frantic searching this morning (with the fervor of Indiana Jones during that scene in the Temple of Doom when he's trying to get to the antidote), there was nary a donut in the office. So now, all that stuff that he ignored last week as trivial in comparison to Donut Monday has come rushing back in a wave of devastation and despair.

It's actually quite sad. Imagine if you put up with a lot of hassles because you knew there was a big payoff, only to find out that the payoff was a lie. You keep telling yourself, "I can put up with this, because there's a long term benefit." But Santa's not real, your investment broker is running a Ponzi scheme, your meticulously-built Beanie Baby collection is worthless, and Donut Monday doesn't exist.