Keeping in line with this blog’s tradition of reminding you about things you’ll rather not discuss, today, we launch into a subject sensitive to almost all of our readers. This is an issue that has brought down civilizations, sparked wars, unseated leaders, ignited unprecedented passion and terminated numerous promising romances. Today, we will be discussing the–

Yes. The only thing you think of at this time of the month.

Damned Salary.

You see, soon as a person regrettably leaves the twin fun houses of home and school, and gets employed in another person’s establishment, his (and even more often, her) life begins to revolve around the Salary. As a typical salary earner in a metropolis, your life is doomed to waking up at 5am and if you’re lucky, sleeping at 11pm.

Accept it. You will never be able to do this again.

Sleep, which you always mistreated as a teenager, is the first to take a walk out of the door. And if you want it back, you had better behave well. No more late nights parties on weekdays, no more reading novels till 4 in the morning, no more catching up on your daily dose of 24. No more sex till daybreak. All that time is now needed to sleep and generate the energy needed to produce the Salary. Suddenly, you begin to use the phrase “no time”–and you freaking mean it.

“Don’t even think of inviting me to your nephew’s birthday party.”

Whether you agree or not, the Salary becomes the the real Mammon, the master, the motivator, the challenger. Those species of humans referred to as “self employed” may take their pleasures in counting profit and losses, but for us earners, the “Certainty of the Salary” is to be worshiped above all other gods. Thou shalt not joke with the Salary, for every cent counts.

Especially when you are literally paid cents.

Children and teenagers don’t give the Salary much thought, its not strictly their life concern. I was also a typical child and a typical teenager. I didn’t understand the dynamics of the Salary and always thought my parents were unfair tyrants who wouldn’t spare some small change. Until I got out of school and got employed myself.

Now I know what you mean when, in the middle of the month, you used to say “I don’t want you children to get spoilt”.

Job interviews and recruitment process could be less tedious if everybody just said the truth. I don’t know why people get all “great organisation”, “excellent team spirit’, “positive blah blah” during job interviews. All those lectures by motivational speakers on how to handle interviews is pure boolsheet. The interviewer knows what you want, and you also know it. Like sex between your parents, even if you ignore it, you still know that’s the only reason you’re here in the first place.

“Dude, just admit it. Its the salary. You applied because you heard that the pay is  fucking great. Ehn?”

And once you land that salary spinner you’re after, you begin to tick on each passing day that draws you nearer to that golden 31^st when you get the cheerful “Account Credited!” from the bank and not the usual “Debit Notification”. The worst month is a 5 week month. Never mind that its still the same 30 or 31days, it will always seem so long and so slow until you just want to shoot the calendar. But hopefully, just before your colleagues begin to smell your hunger, the ever welcome bank alert will pop in and you forget can forget your worries for a few more weeks.

“Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Oh, thank you, sweet Jesus”

Those self-employed folks may not look forward to the end of every month with orgasmic anticipation like the rest of us, but at least they have one particular consolation.