Putting in Overtime
When I got to the “real world”, which is surprisingly similar to the fantasy world in which I have apparently been living for the past 22 years of my life, I learned that one of the phrases you hear the most at a job is “billable hours.” A billable hour is basically work that you do that you charge to a project, you can also think of it as man-hours - how many man-hours is this task going to take to complete? Then you have to make sure you get the right billing code so you can charge your time to the correct project, otherwise you are doing the work for free, or making another project pay for it.
This translates to the romantic world, too. It’s definitely a guy thing (since it relates to business metaphor, and clearly, guys are the only ones that should be in the literal or figurative business world). But don’t worry ladies; it’s a guy thing in a bad way. You see, we, as guys, invest a lot of time to hang out with girls. We give up a lot of things, like playing video games or using the Internet (and that’s asking a lot) to hang out with you. But there is an ulterior motive.
You see, we think of spending time with girls as a billable job - project codes and all. Luckily for you, guys don’t expect a direct payment for their services, but rather they think of it as a reward service. They put in all these billable hours, and are paid that with the good time they have hanging out with you, but in the back of their heads they are accumulating frequent flyer miles that they will eventually want to cash out. And ladies, a lot of guys have put in a lot of man-hours, and they would like to cash-out their frequent flyer miles.
However, it would seem as if ladies work in the non-profit sector, and do not participate in the frequent flyer miles program, nor are they concerned with billable man-hours. This creates a problem - now the guy will try to bill his man-hours to another project. Other projects, which have also been described as “hood-rats” by such classic cinematographic masterpieces as “40 Year Old Virgin”, are not an ideal situation. I’ve even been told that hood-rats don’t like to be called that, and they in fact have feelings too. The fact that they have feelings, and that those feelings are hurt by these actions is not the fault of the men; it is the fault of the little asterisk in the corner that says “not all women participate in the frequent flyer mile program.” That’s right, you non-profit ladies made that girl turn into a stripper at the “bad strip club” because you ignored the guy that would treat you well, but treats the hood-rat like garbage. You might as well have personally insulted her and berated her self esteem until it was a pile of ooze, worthy of making a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
All we ask you to do is take away that little asterisk and get with the program. Look, we’re used to the crappy rewards that are associated with the frequent flyer miles program, so we’re not looking to join the mile-high club or anything like that. However, some of us have accumulated enough miles to fly around the world a couple times - just give us a crappy little reward. Don’t ask me what that reward should be, because I suck at picking out gifts - even for myself, but you should be creative. You control what the payout is like for those miles, if you want it can be something as simple as appreciating them, patting them on their heads, telling them that they’re good boys, rubbing their bellies, etc., you can - but keep in mind, the better the rewards for your frequent flyer mile program, the more likely that guy is to fly with your airline in the future.
Guys can only work so many-hours without getting their rewards, and if you never pay out, ladies, eventually that guy will move to a more profitable market, but I guess losing out helps to build character.
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