To Work Or Not To Work

There is a guy I work with who I’m pretty sure only works so that he doesn’t get bored. His wife seems to be the main income earner, and I guess his wage is so insignificant to their overall income that he didn’t even notice that for 3 weeks there had been an error with the wages transfer and he hadn’t been paid.

This is the second person I’ve come across in my life who didn’t need to work, but chose to anyway. Quite a number of years ago, while I was still at uni studying, I worked at a Mrs Fields store with a girl who came from what appeared to be a reasonably well off family. She came to work one day after doing a bit of shopping, and was showing me her new perfume – she’d bought a new fragrance because, she told me, she thought that it was nice to have a different scent to wear out in the evening than she wore during the day
It seemed to escape her attention that she was telling this to someone who wasn’t wearing perfume because hundred dollar bottles of perfume didn’t really factor into the finances of a full time uni student working 12 hours a week for minimum wage.

As the course of this conversation went on, it came out that the money that she made at the store went into a savings account because she had a weekly allowance from her parents that was more than what she made by working there. I didn’t know what to say to that.

We never did get around to discussing why it was that she had taken the job if she didn’t need the money. At her age it can’t have been the same as for the guy I work with now, because I’m pretty sure his reason is just boredom.

What other reasons could a person have for working when they don’t need to? Outside of boredom, I can’t think of any, because if I had a whole lot of cash and time, I can think of plenty of things that I could be doing other than serving people coffee and cookies.