Retirement plan: sue the company

The first reaction is to roll the eyes and shake the head, but as a good American, my second thought was how can I make some money like that?
And then it hit me.

I work for a newspaper. Most of what we cover is depressing. If I can just get my case into a Brazilian court, MainStreet Newspapers could be held liable for my ill temper, depression, excessive use of caffeine and/or alcohol and general mental instability.

This is my new retirement plan. It’s a marked improvement over my old retirement plan, which required some well-insured motorist to crash through the window in my office and pin me under the front bumper without killing me, although citing a Brazilian precedent in taking management to court could be dicey. However, I know a really good attorney who’ll need some work now that the governor’s race is over. We’ll make a motion for a change of venue, and ol’ Roy can talk the judge into moving the matter south a few (thousand) miles. Anything is possible in court.

Over the past five years, I’ve had to write continuously about lake levels falling in the drought, water rationing and resulting cash flow problems. I’ve done countless stories on revenue reductions in government and tax increases or utility hikes to cover them. Furloughs, layoffs, pessimistic economic forecasts and “it’ll-be-even-worse-next-year” stories have become routine. That’s all on top of local, state and national elections, weekly reports on really stupid criminals that cause one to develop a cynical view that God erred when he allowed humans on the ark. I also have to cover the Commerce Planning Commission and the Upper Oconee River Basin Water Authority. Nuf said. MainStreet Newspapers owes me for the pain and suffering that come with the job.

I do have a fallback position. I weighed 160 when I started working for The Commerce News. Now I tip the scales at 183. Don’t tell me the extra weight is from over-eating at Barbara’s table or my sedentary lifestyle. It’s all that food I eat at functions where my job requires attendance and the need to sample the Halloween candy for quality control purposes. Ka-ching!