Here we are at the start of another work week. How many people do you know who love their jobs? I mean people who actually love to labor and who can’t wait until the weekend is over so they can go back to work? I don’t think anyone actually loves going to work — some just hate it a bit less than others.

Suppose someone were to conduct a poll and ask random strangers on the street the question: “If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you rather be?”

How many of these people would say that they’d rather be at work? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say approximately none.

However, millions of us head out to work each morning, not because we like it, but because we need a payday at the end of the week. Most of us work anywhere from forty to sixty hours a week and what do we get come Friday? A piece of paper. Yes, we do all that for a piece of paper.

Of course these pieces of paper are worth more than, say, bits of copy paper, toilet paper or gum wrappers, because these papers have words like “pay to the order of” and “void after ninety days” and they also have numbers on them, which makes them more valuable. The more numbers they have, the more coveted they are.

Immediately after leaving work on payday, we head off to the bank where we give the teller our piece of paper. She gives us another piece of paper in return that has words like “receipt” and “deposit” on it. Oh, and it also has numbers.

We usually stop on our way home and pick up food and a few personal items for which we give the store clerk a piece of paper with numbers on it, from our own personal booklet of papers, or either a square plastic card with the word “debit” or “credit” on it. (Which also gives new meaning to the question: “paper or plastic?”).

We then return home where we take our little paper booklet and proceed to tear out little pages, write numbers on them and place them into envelopes addressed to places like, Central Telephone Services, United Electric Company, Credit Card People, etc. When we finish, we add up the total of all the numbers we have written and subtract the total from the amount on the piece of paper we received from our week’s work and discover that there aren’t any numbers left.

The following Monday morning we head back off to work where we begin the journey toward our next payday. We stumble through the maze of cubicles, much like trained mice, not really wanting to be here, but thankful that no one moved our cheese.

And in all this working and trading of papers and plastic cards, we rarely, if ever, see any real cash or coins, which makes me wonder…where has all the real money gone? Just between you and me, I think the government gave most of it away to the auto makers and to Wall Street.

The drug cartels, the mob, and the FBI have the rest of it hidden inside their briefcases.

Tags: laid off workers, who moved my cheese, work