From what I've read here I have respect for Cary but this response sounded like he needed to do some yard work or his wife needed something picked up on the way home.

It really sounds like this kid simply needs to grow up. I'm going to do my best to tamp down my still-extant resentments on these very issues because I went through them. It took me years to learn not to be confrontational with my bosses and it cost me dearly. But I learned.

From losing jobs as a teenager, I learned to be on time. In a capitalist society that holds the individual as indiscriminate cogs in the machine, there's few opportunities to beat this game.

One has to either pick a way of generating income that doesn't require rigid attendance or find that enlightened company that truly allows flex-time. Otherwise, you suck it up and train oneself to conform.

If you notice, the present company actually seems to offer this: some people come in at 10, some folks work remotely. Problem is, as "the new guy" or "junior guy" the LW is low man on the totem pole and he draws the day start. Since IT is actually service-oriented and NOT task-oriented, I'll make an assumption based on the standard work day and guess that there aren't that many other staff there past early evening that will need service and, anyway, the 10am person has got that covered. So what that no one has needed him at 8:30 am in these initial 5 months? He's there just in case. And to cover his boss' ass, BTW. The department has a service commitment and it starts at 8:30 am. Boo-hoo.

I used to work full-time and now only part-time in a particular industry for this very reason: crew call often precedes the dawn. Having partially worked my way out of that industry and having many mornings to myself I unequivocally agree that an "organic" approach to sleeping and rising is a much better way of life. But it's taken me to middle age to achieve this and I still need to bend frequently 'cause that's when the work needs me there. That's America and the nature of many types of work.

I am also a fine artist, writer and musician who also will never let those vocations be denigrated as hobbies and I'll advise the LW that capitulation to the commercial workplace in abrogation of your artistic dreams is a sure road to unhappiness. So while I cannot judge exactly why he's decided not to pursue his artistic life, if he's got the real desire, the talent and, I will add in bold, the discipline, then he should pursue it passionately, wholeheartedly, without doubts, with faith. At the end of the day if you're not only working at what you desire much less at what you have talent for, then life is...much better. And, yes, the work and discipline can make even a modicum of talent shine. It is possible through hard work to make yourself good at something.

Now I had some lessons as a young person that helped me. Serving 6 am religious services as a child helped, the constancy of school schedules (hey yeah, how did this kid get through school if this is his problem?). But I was a sleepy head, a non-clock watcher and a narcoleptic after lunch (still am). But it didn't cut it, I got my ass kicked and I changed.

In the profession to which I referred to earlier I hear constant complaints from management that they're having trouble replenishing the work force with younger people because no "young people" can deal with the early hours or the rigors of the gig (stagecraft). While I'm cautious to avoid coming off as a "when I was young" jerk, I question the up-bringing of many young folks.

I had a several-year job in a service position in academia where I was required to use large amounts of student labor and quit it in part in frustration because I was used to a fully professional milieu and had trouble working with the students. It actually took me a while to realize that many of my 19-22-year-olds had never had to work before in their lives. Even the kids who came from modest backgrounds. I needed to get real work done too and couldn't work as a den father anymore. That was OK, I moved on but my family had needed me to work from a really young age and I couldn't relate.

Which is why I don't want to lecture here because my background is not the LW's background and I say learn to live your dreams. The artist's life has it's own rigors and hardships and is most definitely not for everyone (right, Cary?). But it is a soulful life and a higher calling.

BUT, if you gotta punch the clock, fighting the river will only get you drowned and the river will never notice. As Bruce Hornsby sang, it's just the way it is.

'Cause you're sure acting like you don't. On purpose.

You're acting like a semi-reasonable person who doesn't live in the United States. What gives? How is it not evident to you that the incredible hypocrisy of Republican/fundamentalist "philosophy" and slime tactics of the last 25 years is coming home to roost in this poor teenager?

How is it that anyone, especially one of us, would have to re-hash this to you when clear-as-glass explanations of it are everywhere around us? Are you cloistered? On a remote farm? Without electronic media or newspapers? You're a hermit?

What's that condescending quip from decades past?

Here's a dollar, go buy a clue.

Hey Smurf-

Keep hammering at BobbyG and the other retrograde thinkers.

Q: amused at your recent post and it's creative use of "petard" but by the end I had to question whether you understand the word and the famous expression of which it's a component: "hoisted by his own petard".

You do, yes?