Longtime readers know that this hardware gig of Merle Wayne Sneed's sort of took on a life of it's own. My objective in taking the job was to work about 20 hours week and to make some golfing and bowling money. A career or worse yet, being part of a "team", was the farthest thing from my mind. Twenty hours soon became 24, then 30 hours, finally cresting at 35, just under what would make me full time and entitle me to some pissant benefits. Thirty-five hours were way too much, so after some whining my hours were dialed back to 32, where they have been the past year or so. Thirty-two hours a week is still what I call too damn many hours. Perhaps you work a traditional work week and are screaming at your computer screen, "Stop you complaining, you old baboon." To you I say, I've done my time, I got my parole, I'm free of the man. Mostly, anyway. I worked 38 long years for the man and few of the approximately 1976 weeks of my full-time employment career, involved as few as 40 hours. So there. Anyway, the recession has finally found Merle Wayne in the form of a two hour per week cut in my schedule. That might not sound like much, but I love it. And that's not all. This afternoon, a coworker was complaining to me about a cut in his hours. He mentioned that the boss said she was considering giving him my 7 hours on Saturday. He was wondering how I would feel about that? Oh, I don't know. Ecstatic, delirious, gleeful, delighted, thrilled...pick one. The specter of actually having a part time job that isn't simply a managerial trick to beat me out of some pissant benefits, is a dream come true. Maybe you are asking, why I don't just quit? I'm not a full time retired person kind of guy. At least, not yet. Besides, I like the golf money. Let me tell you my favorite part time worker story, starring me. When I was 19 and before Mrs. Sneed and I got married, I worked for an outfit called A.J. Bayless Supermarkets. The manager of my store was a kindly old, lying, cheating skunk named Glen. The kindly old part came because he got to be the good cop, to the bad cop played by his asshole assistant, a bully named Dave M. But that's another set of stories. Glen received quarterly bonuses based upon the cost of operating his store. The less money it took to operate the store, the more moolah made its way to Glen's pockets, come bonus time. Therefore, Glen would lie, cheat and steal to get the maximum number of bucks for himself. Glen would sell spoiled merchandise on the theory that some people would not bother to return it. So, on Memorial Day, 1969, I found myself working with the skeleton crew in the store, earning a sweet time and a half for holiday pay. In case you wonder, that was a tidy $2.40 per hour in those days. Imagine my surprise when payday rolled around and my time and a half was conspicuously absent from my pay. Giving Glen the benefit of the doubt, I pointed out the error to him. Glen's answer was short and to the point. "You're part time and part timers don't get time and a half." "But I work 44 hours a week", I pleaded. "I can call you whatever I want." End of discussion. I called in sick the following day and went looking for another job. Two weeks later, I quit. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky