Greed

Money changes people here, it had it’s sights on me before I came to my senses.

Living here on base is like the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. It is pretty much the same 12 hours every day seven days a week; the same sights, the same people, the same food, the same everything. People tend to forget why they are here, consumed by their paystub. Many times when I ask people, “how long have you been working here?” They have to think or second guess themselves because they really don’t remember. Because every day of life here is the same as the last, time just isn’t a priority anymore. It isn’t about the money; it’s ALL about the money.

Like I said before KBR isn’t a heartless company, you get paint holidays, vacation, sick leave and if someone in your family is hurt and they send a Red Cross message, they will pay you for the time you go home to visit them.

What gets me is, people turn almost all of this down. When you take these paid days off you “only” get paid your salary, no over time is added to your pay. For some reason this bothers people. “I can’t take a day off, I’ll lose money.” Granted you do loose a lot of money when you take paid leave, but if you really think about it, big whoopdy doo. An employee like myself makes around 378.13 bucks a day. If I take paid leave off that goes to 203.13 bucks a day. For some reason people are so worried about that 75 bucks they don’t take off and complain about losing it if they have to take paid days off for training.

If you were working at home, people complain about working on the weekends, but once you pay them enough, they complain about having to take a weekend.

I almost fell into this line of thinking. I have the opportunity to take July 4th off, I thought to myself, “I’m not doing that, I’ll lose 75bucks.” Then I got to thinking, “so what?” 75 dollars to me was about what I made in a week back home, I make that in a few hours here and I will still be banking 203bucks anyway. It is so easy to fall into the money hungry lifestyle. I am glad I caught myself early. I am going to make around 100,000 dollars this year, why be worried about a few thousand off that if the best Id do at home after college will be 40,000?

I hear the same story over and over again, “well I was only going to work here one year, but I couldn’t turn it down.” A lot of people here have alienated themselves from friends and family for what? A few extra bucks? People come over here to make a better life for themselves back home, but they make this their life.

That will NOT be me, I have a plan, and I am sticking to it.