Cushy

That aint working, that’s the way you do it.
Get your money for nothing, get your chicks for free
-“Money for Nothing”, Dire Straights

‘Cushy’ is the old term used to denigrate public employees: they have (we are told time and time again) ‘cushy jobs’.
But what’s the real meaning of ‘cushy’?
According to many reliable dictionaries, it’s supposed to have a Indo-Aryan origin. The suggestion is that the Hindi word for pleasant, ‘khush’, was picked up by British colonial soldiers and the ‘y’ added on – as in the word ‘mush’ made into ‘mushy’.
I don’t think that likely. Rather, I hold with those who think there’s a far simpler explanation.
It’s cushion – with the ‘y’ ending.
A cushy job is then, just what it sounds like: a job where you sit around all day, on your posterior – and count your money. A job where you get paid to do nothing. “Government work” – people will say, and think that sufficient explanation.
But is government work really that cushy?
Consider the town employee whose salary is posted in the paper every year. Consider the government worker whose necessity is debated on live television. Would you want those jobs?
Generally public employees have a certain level of job security – for which they exchange privacy and pay. The average teacher has several advanced degrees and earns about half of what someone with the same education, longevity, and experience would in the private sector.
Which brings me to the cushy County jobs that have been in the news so often in the last year.
If the jobs at the County offices are so cushy, then why is everyone exchanging them so often?
Just last week, the Commissioners approved several new positions – but they weren’t actually new positions, they were just old people in positions that were new to them. Technically they were new appointments. Do you think these experienced County employees who, because of recent layoffs and/or retirements, had to switch jobs to save their jobs, think their new jobs are cushy?
What about the Administrative Clerk who was moved to the Switchboard? What about the Switchboard Operator who is now an Administrative Clerk? Or the woman hired six months ago who is now unemployed? What about the dozens of employees who were furloughed for months in the last few years, losing thousand of dollars and, eventually, losing their jobs altogether?
It’s a game of ‘Musical Chairs’, and none of the remaining seats are cushy. Some of the chairs are metal. Some are more like stools: hard and unsteady. Some people end up on the floor.
Is the floor ‘cushy’?
Sure, there are cushy jobs out there. The kind of job where you get a bonus even though the company is bankrupt, now that’s a cushy job. The job of Princess seems, for the most part, pretty cushy. I knew a guy in Jamaica who spent the day strolling the white sands of Negril with a few coconuts, a machete, and a bottle of Appleton Rum. Now that was a cushy job.
That was a cushy beach.
That was a cushy week… but I digress.
For the most part – from what I have seen, public employees do thankless jobs, for reasonable pay, and take an unreasonable amount of abuse regardless. Like everyone else, some are good at their jobs. Like everyone else, some are pleasant to work with. For the most part though, their jobs are not cushy.
I don’t think we should be inordinately concerned for their fate: we all have our share of troubles these days. But I do think we need to lighten up a bit. These days even the guy with the upholstered leather recliner in his office is afraid to relax. These days we’re all checking to see if someone slipped a whoopee cushy onto our chairs as we start to sit down.