Reclaim Your ‘TGIF’

As somebody who tends to over-analyze life, I spend a lot of time asking myself ‘What do I do?’.

I mean, I know what I do.  I do the normal office stuff that people who work in offices do:  I send emails, stare at spreadsheets, and type really furiously when people walk by my door so that they’ll think I’m working harder than I really am.

But on a deeper level, I have to have a purpose for it all:  Ideally, a purpose that runs a bit deeper than ‘So I can pay my mortgage and not have to go live in a van down by the river’ (though meeting that purpose is one my vital career goals).

…….

The other day, though, I realized that one of the biggest things I do is give people back their Fridays.

……

I’m a wage slave.

Day in and day out, I work to do everything I can to help the company grow, as well as to help our clients better their own companies.  I like my job, and I take pride in always going above and beyond. But, on Fridays, I turn into that scene from the opening of The Drew Carey Show, where every person in the office is staring at the clock, waiting for the hour hand to finally hit 5 so they can be freed from their cubicles.

This isn’t a good thing or a bad thing.  It’s just part of being a standard office worker.

For company owners, however, 5 o’clock never comes.

Their worries don’t magically end just because the calendar says it’s Friday.

In fact, Fridays are often the most stressful day of the week:  While us worker bees are counting down the minutes until we can walk out with our paychecks, the company owners are having to figure out how to make those paychecks happen.

……

Here at Construction Finance, that’s our specialty:  Making sure those paychecks happen.

We make sure business owners have the working capital they need to pay suppliers, and keep the lights on, and pay those worker bees who keep everything running.  We make sure checks don’t bounce, and suppliers don’t lien projects, and workers don’t walk off the job from slow payment.

By doing all of that, we give business owners back something that their employees take for granted: The freedom to enjoy their weekends.

With us working behind the scenes to make sure the bills get paid, it means dads get their Fridays back.  It means moms can focus on trips to the park, rather than negotiating extensions with suppliers.  It means less stress for everybody, and more time to pack a cooler for the lake, or to catch a baseball game, or to just curl up on the couch with a movie.

….

As a worker bee for the financial industry, I’ll probably never cure cancer. I don’t really get to save too many orphans, or run into burning buildings, or teach rooms full of kids how to read.  The boring nuts and bolts of my job aren’t particularly meaningful, and I’ll never get to make a viral Facebook post about what a difference I make.

But I do let people have their ‘TGIF’ back.

And as someone who really enjoys weekends, that’s a pretty big reward unto itself!