Owen Courreges: The one simple trick to really enjoy Labor Day

Owen Courrèges

Today is Labor Day. Of course, with it being Labor Day, I started out writing this column with a single question boring into the recesses of my mind.

“Do I really need to write a column for Labor Day?”

The answer, of course, is no. That would be work, and today celebrates the backbone of the American system, the American worker. As all of us toil away our lives, squandering our precious dreams on jobs we probably don’t enjoy, we need a moment to celebrate both our shared sacrifices and creeping miseries.

And we’ll do it with cheap beer and hot dogs of dubious origins. Because damn it, that’s what Americans do.

Here in New Orleans, of course, a lot of people are in the service industry and don’t receive the full benefits of Labor Day. Tourism doesn’t take a holiday (indeed, that would by oxymoronic). If anything, Labor Day weekend, coinciding as it does with Southern Decadence, is a time of increased activity. Ironically, many New Orleanians will spend Labor Day working harder than ever.

However, I will not be among those working their tail feathers to the bone. In fact, it’s highly questionable whether I will complete this column, what with the siren’s call of cheap wine and juvenile cartoons beckoning me to more slothful endeavors.

But before I do abandon my responsibilities, I will provide you with four nuggets of wisdom for how to properly enjoy Labor Day:

1. Don’t work. If you have to because of the nature of your employment, I am sorry – that really stinks. But this is not a day for working voluntarily, whether it be cleaning the house or indulging the “honey-do” list. It’s downright un-American to work needlessly on Labor Day, so unless you’re some sort of terrorist subversive, I want to see your keister in that barcalounger.

2. Eat and drink to excess. Don’t give me this sissy crap about being on a diet or watching your figure. That’s what Tuesday is for. Labor Day is also about celebrating the fruits of our labors, so I want to see you bloated, intoxicated, and miserable, crying vainly to an indifferent deity about how you could have done this to yourself.

3. If you’re not working, fake it. Technically, Labor Day is reserved for workers. If you are unemployed or otherwise not actually working, the best tactic is to pretend you actually do work. These phrases should help you impersonate a working stiff: “Whew, I spent all week putting out fires!” “I’m not sure whether I’ve been working hard or hardly working.” And if these don’t work, this one definitely will: “I have a poster of a cat in my office hanging on a tree branch with the caption: ‘Hang in there!’”

4. Don’t argue politics. Seriously, on Labor Day nobody wants to hear you drone on about your inexplicable love affair with Eugene Debs or your unnatural obsession with Ayn Rand. The idea of celebrating labor is itself pretty innocuous. Don’t turn it into an excuse to bray like an uncastrated donkey about what an insufferable ideologue you are. If you really want that kind of stuff, check in here next Monday when my next column premieres.

4. No seriously, don’t work. I swear, I’ll find you if you do.

Ok, I’m really ending this now. I’d come up with a decent closing, but man, that would be a lot of work. It’s just not the time for that.

Owen Courrèges, a New Orleans attorney and resident of the Garden District, offers his opinions for UptownMessenger.com on Mondays. He has previously written for the Reason Public Policy Foundation.