Monday, Monday La la la la

It's awful knowing that one seventh of our life will be wasted on Mondays. —Anonymous

Just once, I would like to wake up, turn on the news, and hear...'Monday has been cancelled, go back to sleep.' I work for a small town hospital in the business office. With the economy as it is, work has changed. People have lost insurance, people are delaying seeking medical care, medical costs have skyrocketed, and work has morphed into Jerry Mcguire. Show. Me. The. Money. Try to capture the money up front since people often default on medical bills as if this expense was a whim.

♪A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound
A buck or a pound, a buck or a pound
Is all that makes the world go round ♪—Cabaret

I enjoy my job, except for the four most hated words in the English language,…’other duties as assigned’. I have ODAS in a five week rotation; every fifth week is Hell Week. Those duties held me captive last week. On what should have been my return to the world of light and air, I was cast back, a wisp, a shadow. My week was not my week. I was just filling in for the co-worker who went part-time. I would have to repeat Hell Week. It was not fair Lethe was unavailable to keep hell burning. I went to my supervisor to discuss the situation. If you want to get me riled, don’t play fair. Should I now serve double time because I happened to follow her in the roster?

‘When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer.’ — Hank Rearden 

My supervisor had no solution for me. It was business as usual. She did remark, ‘Have you noticed when you wear brown you get agitated?’ What? Are colors arbitrary? What has a color to do with emotions? I had to find out…

From How Colors Impact Moods, Feelings, and Behaviors: 

"Artists and interior designers have long understood how color can dramatically affect moods, feelings and emotions. It is a powerful communication tool and can be used to signal action, influence mood, and cause physiological reactions.

I asked, does brown cause agitation? What have others found out about the emotion of brown? Rather than starting from scratch in putting together a plan for answering my question, I used the Internet to research.

• Brown is a natural color that evokes a sense of strength and reliability. 
• Brown brings to mind feeling of warmth, comfort, and security. It is often described as natural, down-to-earth, and conventional, but brown can also be sophisticated. 
• Brown is the color of good furniture and favorable smells thus imparting happiness. Amber, auburn, bay, beige, bronze, brunette, buff, burnt sienna, camel, chestnut, chocolate, cinnamon, cocoa, coffee, copper, fallow, fawn, old gold, hazel, khaki, lion, liver, mahogany, nut, ochre, russet, rust, seal brown, sepia, snuff, tan, taupe, toast, tawny, umber. 
• Brown can also create feelings of sadness and isolation. 

Hmmm, these are not words that rankle, goad or irritate. I had to test this. I resolved to wear brown for the entire week to see how things would work out. On Tuesday, I passed my supervisor in the hallway and remarked wow, it has been a day. She pointed at me and stated, ‘Brown’ and kept walking. Next day, I caught her leaving the building. She remarks, ‘Are you doing this on purpose?’ 'No, boss, why would I do that?' All the while keeping a straight face. Thursday and Friday, nothing. Perhaps my wearing of brown had created feelings of sadness and isolation for her? I think it was a great success. I felt confident and strong. What can brown do for you today?

‘Your mind is your only judge of truth–and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal.’ — John Galt