You Have To Pay Your Dues

Siblings of Mark Wahlberg9 years ago

I kiss so much ass at my day job that I’m legitimately concerned my upper lip will permanently reek of middle aged, overpaid ass sweat. But still I sit, with a perpetual smile on my face, taking momentary solace in my elongated lunch breaks, repeated bathroom respites, and writing these columns on the company dime.

The point here is not to regale you with my melancholy entrance into the corporate world, but instead to point out just how wrong most of us are throughout college about how things really are. Most of us, including me, come from families that do pretty fucking well in one way or another, with the Greek system possessing an inordinate amount of family business owners that seems statistically impossible. But true.

When you grow up working for your mom and dad, grandpa and grandma, or under the Gestapo-like supervision of your older brother, you kind of just assume that after four years of debauchery filled undergraduate studies and grad degree victory laps, you’ll be plugged in to a high level position with an expense account, multiple assistants, and more time spent perfecting your Patrick Bateman imitation than doing actual work. This is even worse if you go to school at a place like I did, where even I admit we’re predominantly a bunch of arrogant twats brimming with totally unfounded self-confidence.

But then it actually happens, and you’re sad Drake all day at the office because “nothing was the same.” You’re given actual projects, endless responsibilities, and fuck the government takes a ton of that paycheck. Hours aren’t “whenever I wake up” ’til the tee time. Performance reviews are scarier than any meeting with nationals ever could be (even after the “Bill Cosby” party) and your boss not having given birth to you is a major fucking problem.

I’ll admit there have been times in just my first year I’ve wondered if Mom and Dad were hiring, but then I realized, even in the darkest days of endless minutiae, something that our much maligned organizations have taught us: Giving up is for pussies. And we’re not pussies.

Paying your dues fucking blows, but no matter how high the US News ranks your degree or who you know (unless your last name is Romney or something), we all have to do it. It’s an inevitable and unavoidable part of life for those of us who can’t bounce or throw a ball at an elite level, like taxes, death, and Hillary Clinton lying about her emails.

So, as I sit here in my office, nostalgic at the thought of my alma mater’s welcome week just around the corner, cherish the time you have left, the experiences you’ll never forget, and get ready for what’s coming next. It’s not all rays of sunshine here. This is the real world and in the real world doesn’t have time for your bullshit.

I wish someone would’ve warned me, too..