Working through Labor Day.

Happy Labor Day! I'll be working all day, thanks very much. Someone has to keep the engine of commerce running. YOU'RE WELCOME.

Alas, the life of the freelancer. Assignments come in at random and deadlines are deadly. But it's all right; I had no social plans for today. Working on a holiday never bothered me unless I was missing a party I wanted to attend, and as I've gotten older, I have found precious few events that meet that particular criterion. 

Pardon me if I've told this story in this space before: When I was in college I worked for a time as a general dogsbody for a small midtown office that did a lot of mailings, and I mean a lot. They did not observe Columbus Day, but the post office certainly did. However, in Manhattan at least, the post office itself did not sleep; its windows were shuttered and its postmen were at rest, but the big sorting offices were still open. If a company wanted to get a dozen sacks of mail into the system that day, they just had to bring it to the loading dock and it would be cheerfully accepted. All they needed were the sacks, a big dolly, and a dopey college student who needed the money.

Well, if you've ever done this kind of work, you discover quickly that getting the four wheels of a dolly to play nicely together is like getting the band into the studio after the third album flopped and the tour disintegrated into fistfights. You also discover that, as smooth as they look in most places, the sidewalks of Manhattan are in fact pitted and furrowed as a centenarian's face; that the smallest amounts of litter can jam a little wheel; that the curb cuts may be and should be perfect for wheelchairs but are not wide enough for dollies; that mailbags love nothing better than to swing freely from the handle to which you tied them and drag on the ground or at least throw off the dolly's forward impetus; that the sewer grates are sinking everywhere and love nothing better than to reach out and take a bite out of a small and errant wheel. I don't remember how many blocks it was, but it was too many. Still, I got there, and delivered the goods, and the dolly and I made it back safely. 

So it's not a bad thing to work on the holidays. But it's a lot easier to do it at home, doing research on your laptop for pay, than to be shoving an uncooperative dolly through the pitiless streets of the naked city to deliver pamphlets to be mailed, most of which would be thrown away upon reception.

I still maintain that everyone in college should have a job like that. Or at food service or delivery, or something else low-paying and unexpectedly challenging. It teaches humility, but also self-respect, which is far better than ballooned-up pride that contains a deep sense of inadequacy. Plus, you might get a funny story out it.