Seriously, is there any holiday more depressing than Labor Day?

It goes without saying that our last summer holiday comes much too early, but this year we have the special bonus of leaders who are furious with the lazy, shiftless, unproductive, ungrateful, useless mopes who make up the American workforce.

Most years, politicians will issue proclamations about U.S. workers, the bedrock of our nation, pursuing the American Dream, yadda yadda bull bull bull. Not in 2021, though. This year, they're all screaming just one question: Why doesn’t anybody want to work anymore?

It's a legitimate question, since millions of people, from bartenders to rocket scientists, are taking extra time to return to the workforce. From entry-level serfs to highly-sought techies, the hesitation is broad-based and troubling.

Still, let's be honest about the whole thing. All the politicians and pundits aren't asking about the people who decided to retire last year, a number that apparently doubled to more than 3 million. And they aren’t asking about the people who are earning enough to thrive on one income instead of two.

No, the vitriol is reserved for the poor, semi-poor, nearly poor and the millions who are just getting by in the land of plenty. Entire industries, from restaurants to ride shares to daycare, depend on people working for low pay and, often, zero benefits. Pretty much every industry in the country is facing staffing shortages, but we’re only angry at the people who are at the bottom of the pyramid.

Fun Fact: None of us wants their jobs, either. Really, when was the last time you woke up and said…

“Gee, I wish I could wash dishes for the next ten hours,” or

“Wouldn’t it be fun to spend the day cleaning an airport bathroom,” or

“I love taking calls all day from people with problems I am not authorized to resolve.”

Anyone who wants one of those jobs can get one, because millions of people have moved on to greener pastures. Any takers?

Of course, this is how capitalism works. Supply and demand drive prices, free markets create new opportunities and every resource seeks its maximum returns. Most of the time, those resources are steel or oil or rail cars, but this year the scarce resource is people. Real wages for most workers have actually declined over the past 40 years, but it looks like 2021 is the year that everyone is getting a raise, including the dishwashers.

Personally, I think it’s worth the tradeoff. I’ll end up paying an extra dime for my coffee and a dollar for my pizza, but maybe we’ll be seeing fewer homeless encampments under the expressway. Maybe fast-food workers will finally be able to buy some of the food they make. Maybe working moms will still have a few bucks left over after they pay someone to watch their kids for ten hours a day.

Now, if only we could stop being so furious at the people who are getting a chance to move up a rung on the ladder, Labor Day could be just a bit less depressing for everyone.


Our labors would be much more rewarding in the coming year if you just click here to subscribe, and it won’t even require a minimum wage increase.

It’s Independence Day and, like all loyal patriots, I will spend the day at a public reading of the Declaration of Independence, followed by a reenactment of the signing.

Hah! You fell for that? No way, Joseph. Like all my fellow countryfolks, I’ll spend the holiday at a barbecue, consuming huge amounts of food and way too much beer. Then I’ll look for the closest fireworks display and spend the night watching stuff go boom.

Even in our polarized nation, great holidays like Independence Day bring us closer together. I once argued with my neighbor about the relative merits of Maker’s Mark versus (boo, hiss) Crown Royal, but it’s really hard to keep up the rancor when you’re stuffing your face...and in a stupor.

That’s why we need more holidays in America and not just “historical” holidays like Independence Day, Juneteenth and Mother's Day. We need new holidays that celebrate all that makes our nation special today and every day. At the Holiday Viability Assessment Laboratory at Dad Writes, our research team has identified the ten holidays most worthy of celebration in coming years, including:

1. National Gig Worker Day. With so many people working double jobs in this country, we need a holiday that’s modeled after Labor Day, but specifically for gig workers. On National Gig Worker Day, all rideshare drivers, Instacart pickers and other warriors in our brave new world will get a break from 3:30 p.m. to 4:17 p.m. Unpaid, of course.
   
   
2. National Heirloom Day. On this special observance, adult children are required to accept—and CHERISH—whatever heirlooms, relics, family treasures or knick-knacks their parents want to pass down to them. (Stuffed moose, false teeth and all undergarments are excluded, however.)
   
   
3. National Mattress Day. The mattress industry has been in the wilderness too long, forced to piggyback on Presidents’ Day and Memorial Day and Arbor Day and pretty much every other real holiday to hold their once-a-year sales. With National Mattress Day, all our favorite dealers can do just one sale per year and we’ll all take the rest of the year off.
   
   
4. National Extended Car Warranty Day. We all know we need an extended car warranty, but it’s so hard to get in touch with anyone who will offer us one of these incredibly wonderful contracts. With a national holiday, everyone can take the whole day off to wait by the phone for a call about ways we can protect our cars, especially the ones with less than 857,309 miles on the odometer.
   
   
5. National Lobbyist Day. Seriously, we need a holiday to celebrate the hardworking Americans, and sometimes foreigners, who craft our laws and feed our overworked Congresspersons. I’ll even bet that one of these selfless public servants will be willing to draft the proclamation and deliver it to Capitol Hill on our behalf.
   
   
6. Expired Groceries Day. We’ll celebrate with big food fests, as always, but everything we eat must be past its expiration date. The USDA will issue a recipe book for people who are uncertain about combining year-old pickles and potatoes with outdate yogurt.
   
   
7. National Menu Day. This is more like a Jewish holiday because it is just a bit restrictive, but on this special day, every restaurant diner is required to take their food in whatever way it is listed on the menu. There will be no substitutions, no extras and absolutely no dressing on the side.
   
   
8. National Nurses Day. Yeah, we know, there already is a National Nurses Day, but nobody pays any attention. In our new and improved version, all U.S. nurses get the day off with pay and doctors are required to change all dressings, IVs and bedpans. Seems only fair, ya know?
   
   
9. National Overtime Day. While most national holidays involve giving federal employees the day off, National Overtime Day gives the rest of America a free day and federal employees will work a second shift to cover for them. Seems only fair, ya know?
   
   
10. National Me Day. If there is one belief that unites all Americans, it’s the absolute assurance that they are the most important and admirable people in the world. To recognize our greatness, National Me Day will allow every citizen to proclaim a holiday that celebrates them and only them. There won’t be any feasts because each person will be waiting for someone else to make their food, but we’ll make it all work out eventually.
    

 
Have we missed anyone? Let us know your recommendations for new holidays and we will add them to the list that we deliver to Congress by way of our lobbyist friends on K Street. We can’t wait for the parties in 2022.
 
When Dad Writes receives the Medal of Freedom for our leadership in the holiday sweepstakes, subscribers will be invited to the ceremony. Don’t miss your chance to be part of history. Click here to subscribe now.
 

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On behalf of the university, its staff, and all the alumni of our fine institution, I bid a warm welcome to the graduating class of 2021.
 
What an exciting year to be completing your studies at our university. Yes, I realize that you didn’t exactly complete your studies “at” our university, but we did include the school colors in all our Zoom backgrounds and we did insist that you rent space in our dorms even when you couldn’t be here, so it’s really the same thing.
 
At first, I was a bit nervous about speaking to such a large group, even on Zoom, but I remembered that incredibly sensible advice that I should imagine all of you are just sitting there in your underwear. And that’s easy to do, since I can see so many of you actually are sitting there in your underwear. Also, it turns out that Spiderman underpants come in adult sizes.
 
Of course, you didn’t travel all the way from your kitchen to your dining room table to listen to a long presentation about the glories of our university or the traditions we uphold. You want to hear about how special you are and how bright your future is, and you especially want to hear that you’ll be able to pay back your student loans before you die.
 
I am delighted to tell you that I can answer all your questions in the affirmative. Yes, you are a truly special class, a group of immensely gifted students who mastered the art of packing, again and again, while we announced and retracted our campus opening plans 42 times over the past 15 months. You completed more than 35,000 hours of distanced chemistry lab with only 17 homes burned down in the process. You made your school spirit known when you hacked into the scoreboard at the stadium to Rickroll the football team. And you certainly made your mark when you voted to replace our school mascot with a CBD gummy bear.
 
We know this past year has included a number of disappointments for you as we canceled many on-campus experiences. Many of you were upset you were unable to make out with your bae in the library and you couldn’t play Frisbee on the quad. You’ve told us you feel cheated because you didn’t spend enough time in our hallowed halls, partying with your friends in the dorm, and sharing meals in the cafeteria. (Well, actually nobody said they missed the cafeteria, but the staff there is very sensitive, so we are including them here.)
 
We feel your pain, but our attorneys want you to see this in the most positive of lights. When you return for your class reunions, it will be as if you are here for the first time. You’ll be energized and inspired as you experience the university in 3-D. And, of course, you’ll be surprised as you sample the unique offerings in our cafeteria. (Not pleasantly surprised, we know, but at least you’ll be grateful that you didn’t spend all four years dining on this stuff.)
 
Most important, our distanced journey over the past year has prepared you better than any other graduating class for the world you enter as adults. Working in isolation is now the number one job skill that almost every employer seeks. Whether you’ll be picking produce in the grocery store for Instacart or lubricating the self-driving cars for Uber or dropping Amazon boxes in somebody’s yard, your ability to thrive without human contact will make you even more valuable to the handful of companies that will still be hiring humans in the coming years.
 
For those of you who will be entering the white collar professions, your year of remote learning has prepared you for a lifetime career of working from home, sitting at the same dining room table where you have been based since early in 2020. While earlier graduating classes developed such obsolete skills as personal contact and team building, your graduating class is uniquely equipped for the brave new world of isolation, two-dimensional colleagues and, of course, working from home while wearing Spiderman underpants.
 
Yes, honored graduates, you are the most special, most prepared, most likely to succeed class in history. While many of the adjustments we made to your education over the past year were forced on us by the pandemic, we now recognize that they are the model we should follow from this day forward. Clearly, the incredible value of your remote education justifies the 27% tuition increase we implemented last September, and we look forward to increasing our distanced learning, and tuition, for many years to come.
 
And, no, we don’t give refunds.
 
Unlike a college education, subscriptions to Dad Writes are free for the next 5,000 people who click here to sign up.
 

 
 
 
 
 

I think I’ll cancel my plans for April 1, but maybe I can schedule a really great dinner, as I shift my calendar yet again…

1. Is April Fool’s Day still a thing? It’s been years since I’ve been pranked, or pranked anyone else, but this might be one of those things that’s a big deal at one point in our lives and then recedes. There are lots of phases like that, from an obsession with poop in third grade to big New Year’s parties in our Twenties to school fundraisers in our Forties. And, of course, back to poop in our Eighties.
   
   
2. If I think it’s important, it’s important. If I think it’s going to hold me back, it will hold me back. If I think it’s an infringement on my freedoms, it’s an infringement on my freedoms. And if I think it’s no big deal, it’s no big deal. See how easy that was?
   
   
3. When I was earning bread as a consultant, I learned that the way to be successful is to remember all the mistakes you made with your first clients and then, don’t make those mistakes again. It turns out that’s the secret to pretty much everything else in life, too.
   
   
4. I’ve had a lot of really great dinners in my life, but I cannot remember what we ate at most of them. What made them great was the people I was with or the back story from my trip. I think it’s particularly meaningful that I’ve never had a truly memorable dinner when I was dining alone.
   
   
5. I was on the board of a non-profit that raised the funding we provided to our youth group, while also calling on them to add even more to their budget by increasing their own fundraising. Since they had to raise more money, they decided we had reduced our support and we were absolutely unable to convince them that they were wrong in that conclusion. I get déjà vu when I read posts from friends who continue to cling to falsehoods, no matter how many times the facts are explained to them.
   
   
6. I was editing a home video the other day and I noticed that I'm still wearing a shirt that I bought more than 20 years ago. If the fashion industry is counting on me to help with their recovery, they are absolutely screwed. 
   
   
7. Being a grownup is one of those things that looks like a lot of fun until you get there. It’s like New Year’s Eve parties, homecoming games, awards programs, and getting your own apartment.  
   
   
8. I’ve been very critical of the vaccine roll-out and the government’s response to the pandemic’s impact on everyday Americans, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have come up with a better fix. We all have much greater insight into what’s wrong than we do about how to make it right. Although, seriously, I would have transformed every drive-through in the country into a vaccine site for five consecutive days and, bingo, all gone.

 
Before you share your April Fool’s Day pranks in the comments section, be sure to click here to subscribe to Dad Writes.
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Omigod!! Wake Up, MEN!!!! It’s Valentine’s Day and you didn’t get anything!!! What are you going to do to survive this disaster?????????
 
JK, guys. VD is next week, so you can hit the snooze alarm. Still, we could be posting this alert two months from now and it wouldn’t matter. For most guys, Valentine’s Day is a lose-lose proposition that adds anxiety and risk, but doesn’t exactly spur a ton of strategic thinking.
 
Yeah, there are a few traitors to the YChrom Movement who book spa days and hire private chefs and learn how to, um, scintillate via foot massage, but most men are going to claim they “think best under pressure” and grab whatever they can get delivered in an hour or less next Sunday morning.
 
Yours truly will probably get up around 7 a.m. on the 14th, steal the neighbor’s Sunday papers, and cut out letters for a VD card that just might be incredibly endearing—if I was six years old. Since I’m several times that tenure, it will look more like a ransom note and it will be received almost as warmly.
 
Let’s face facts here. For most men, Valentine’s Day is not the most alluring of holidays. Thanksgiving has food and football. New Year’s has food and football. Super-you-know-what Sunday (today!!) has food and football. Valentine’s Day? Well, there’s food, usually, but not the incredible array of nachos/pizza/wings we get when there’s football.
 
More than the food/football gap, Valentine’s Day is designed for failure. Seriously, there is no way to buy the exact right thing, say the exact right thing, and massage all those toes the exact right way. The only thing that comes in the right size is a Roomba and, trust me, guys, this gift is not as romantic as those Home Depot ads would suggest.  
 
Never fear, though, for the passionate devils at Dad Writes have devised the perfect manly measures for VD excellence. No matter what your situation, here are the perfect gifts for that special other humanoid in your life:
 
If you have children, buy them a pizza and eat it in the car, leaving your significant other alone at home with no interruptions. They get a bit of me-time and you get a pizza. Win and win.
 
If you’re quarantined together, buy a Peloton. There’s no better way to say, “I think you’re hip and hot and fit,” than a $3,000 hamster-wheel/TV combo. And, yes, we’d still think it’s the perfect gift even if we hadn’t bought options on 30,000 shares of Peloton stock.
 
If you’re both working from home, nothing says “You’re a star,” like a bath towel they can use as a Zoom background. Pro tip: Buy a gray towel so the lint and soap suds are less obvious.
 
If you won’t be in the same place, order a romantic dinner to be delivered to each of your locations and enjoy it together on a video call. We suggest a heart-shaped pizza as the main course, although we forget what wine goes with anchovies.
 
If your relationship is brand new, send flowers. It’s the most polite way to say, “I’m excited now, but I know this might fizzle in a week or two.” Plants and candy might still be hanging around as painful reminders after the passion fades, but flowers know how to leave before it all goes south.
 
If your relationship is decades old, buy a bottle of cheap champagne. It’s not very creative, or romantic, but both of you will be too tired to argue about it once the bottle is empty.
 
Best of all, every one of these special, meaningful, truly romantic gifts can be arranged today, while we’re all watching the matchup of, um, you know, uh, those teams from those cities that we don’t live in or near or come from. And enjoy your nachos. After all your Valentine’s planning, you’ve earned a break.
 
Dad Writes subscribers are prepared for all the holidays, from Valentine’s Day to Alban Arthan, and you can be an expert, too, if you just click here.
 

 
 
 
 

Yes, brand new year, fresh start, only a few days old and yet…it seems there was something you were going to do and you just haven’t gotten around to it. What was it? It was really important and the success of 2021 depends on it and you’re not going to be able to sleep at night until you figure it out.
 
Oh. Yeah. That’s it.
 
You forgot to make your New Year’s resolutions. What in the world were you (not) thinking when you didn’t tackle this critical project? Not to worry, though, because the scolds at Dad Writes has been working non-stop to find all the changes you should make in 2021 to become a better person.
 
We understand that some of this will be difficult, but it’s for your own good. You’ve really screwed up a lot in the past year—no offense—and you need some tough love guidance to get you back on the straight and narrow. The list of all the changes you need to make is huge, so we will just focus on the top ten resolutions that you must follow immediately:  

1. Gain 20 pounds. We thought we’d start out with an easy one, one that hardly needs a resolution at all. Success on resolution one will help you as the tasks get tougher and tougher.
2. Forward absolutely fraudulent stories on the internet and leave them on your stream even after your friends point out the fakery. Okay, it’s another really easy one, but we want you to feel good about yourself and your ability to follow through on your intentions.
3. Pay more to finance your holiday 2020 purchases than you actually paid for all that crap in the first place. Again, we’re focusing on the achievable goals first.
4. Offend your relatives for no particular reason. Another can’t-fail resolution, since your family is about as thin-skinned and cranky as they come. Really, you should get an award for putting up with them at all.
5. Burn all the recipes you’ve been clipping for the past 20 years. If you haven’t cooked them yet, they’re nothing but judgmental reminders of your failure to achieve your goals. Does that bring you joy?
6. Speaking of recipes, be a daredevil and finally eat that thing in your freezer that has all the ice crystals on it and might be either a pound of hamburger or a bicycle tire. What could possibly go wrong?
7. Win the lottery. This has always been the key to your financial planning and you’re not going to be able to retire on that yacht unless you do it, so make this the year that you finally live the dream. 
8. In case item 7 doesn’t work out, become a social influencer with 10 million followers. Hint: Step one is changing your name to Kardashian, or maybe Bieber.
9. Digitize all your photos and videos so you can show them to your grandchildren, who will be so fascinated and inspired by your incredible life that they’ll want to take care of you in your old age. This ploy hasn’t worked for anyone else yet, but maybe you’ll be the first.
10. Stop taking direction from people who don’t know you and don’t care about you and presume that they know what’s best for you and give you really stupid advice that has nothing to do with your needs or skills or dreams and just adds more pressure and aggravation to your life and gives you one more reason to feel like you’re being judged unfairly all the time. (Of course, you can take direction from us because we know you so well and we’re almost BFFs, but stop taking advice from anyone else.)

 
These simple steps are guaranteed to make your 2021 even better than drowning in quicksand or dining on dung beetles. Even better, they give you absolute freedom to ignore all those so-called “experts” with their “wisdom” and “experience” and “good advice” and “common sense” that never works. No, no need to thank us. Making you a better person is the least we can do.
 
How else can Dad Writes explain all the ways you need to improve your life? Find out by clicking here to subscribe to all our judgments about what’s best for you.