Back in business

OPINION: I can't believe I'm back at work. It hardly seems fair. I honestly think I could do a much better job if I got to stay at home and read a book and not have to do my work at all, writes Sarah McCarthy in this week's Uptown Girl.

It's also hard to believe Christmas is over and done with for another year. It feels like it's only midway through June (and the weather isn't helping with this delusion) but here I am in January, back at work, sunburn peeling and wearing the same pants I wore on the last day of work (I think – all of my pants are black so it's easy to lose track).

Sometimes I wish that our summer holidays weren't half used up with the whole Christmas palaver.

In the northern hemisphere at least people get to have a nice wee week off for Christmas and then it's back to work but at least with thoughts of summer holidays to bolster them up. But with us it seems to be all in one great big job lot and you end up wasting half of your holiday running around buying wrapping paper and sieving gravy and then before you know it you're back at the coalface wondering how much they give you on the dole (although we are struggling under a National anti-welfare regime so I'm guessing the dole consists of a stern talking-to and a bag of seed potatoes).

And I'm not really one for making New Year's resolutions, I'm more the type to suddenly decide to do something like learn to play the ukulele (no joke, I got a yellow one for Christmas from Mr mr) or resurrect a childhood dream of being an orthodontist (although stymied yet again by an astounding lack of comprehension when it comes to physics, something which apparently comes in mighty handy when trying to drag a recalcitrant incisor back in line), so I don't even have any weird new regimes to struggle with sticking to that would help me through the first, fraught days back at work, like giving up smoking or going on a diet ... (just leaving a beat for my mum to mutter something under her breath).

And don't think I've forgotten the fact that some people have to work over the holiday road toll period. Those people used to be me, stuck working in a restaurant or some such while holiday revellers would breeze in, order nice drinks and nibbly bits and then breeze out again, off for a wee sleep, perhaps, or a stroll round the shops. Bastards.

And that was well before restaurateurs used to shove 15 per cent on top of everything because they had to pay their staff stat pay – we used to do it for the glory and the promise of a bottle of Bernadino Spumante. So I'm there for you too.

So, anyway, back to it.

Hope 2010 is a lot more interesting than 2009, or at least that I will work out how to be a bit more, well, pleasant.

PS: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUMBLE.

» Sarah McCarthy is a Southland Times staff member.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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