Nehaveigur

I am lucky: I can treat work like a country club. I can go there when I like to. It’s a ten minute drive. I can leave when want to. I have leisurely lunch with colleagues. I work out at the gym. I walk between offices and chat.

There are differences of course. Most notably, more often than I’d like, there are urgent  video conferences that I have to dial in to at eight in the morning, but once I’m there, it immediately becomes obvious that I can’t contribute anything. Still I have to stay there for the rest of the call, my camera on, my facial expression alert. 

The gym at work is good. There are bar bells, which is more than can be said for most gyms. There are even two tennis courts. They’re not owned by my company, but they’re just across the street and most of the time they’re vacant. As long as you don’t mind the possibility of the local homeless, or to use the term preferred by our security team, the itinerants, shouting at you.

Twice a week, there’s a coffee truck. My company had some arrangement with them whereby they give me free coffee and pastries. Their coffee is good, but their pastries are sensational. The almond croissant is the best to be had in all of the San Francisco Bay area. Not having to pay for it doesn’t in the least diminish its deliciousness.

Most country clubs don’t have itinerant camps next to them, so that’s something else that’s different. The itinerants with their beards and hollow cheeks live in tents they got from Walmart or Big Five and to a first approximation all of them have a drug problem. There is something wild yet dead in their eyes. They’re not violent but they make you feel threatened. It’s not so much that you think they’ll hit you and more that they make you question things that you don’t know the answer to. My lawyer colleague thinks that she saw one of them ride the bike that was stolen from her son the week before. It’s plausible. Having them, having nothing, next to me and my colleagues, who have so much, is a stark contrast that isn’t lost on us, and I don’t think it’s lost on them either.

I not a complete stranger to country clubs. They’re a uniquely American institution. They’re attractive until you start thinking about them. The problem with country clubs is that almost by definition they’re boring. Tennis is okay, but golf must be the most senselessly elitist of all the passe-temps out there. Elitist because golf courses use up an inordinate amount of land, considering how few people use them. Golf is an inefficient use of acreage. And senseless since golf isn’t actually a sport. Playing it doesn’t meaningfully increase one’s fitness, especially compared with other sports like tennis.

This is where the analogy breaks down. My work is more exciting than golf, and while I treat it like a country club, there’s one distinction that makes all the difference: My work is  meaningful. What I do, after it has passed through several filters provided by capitalism, will still make a net positive contribution. That certainty, more than anything else, allows me to enjoy the amenities.