So after a little hiatus due to website technical difficulties, I’M BACK and ready to keep the articles coming. At the moment I’m sat at the Canarian Tax Office waiting my turn to settle property taxes on behalf of clients (with The Prodigy blasting over my headphones to keep the brain juices flowing!) plus a million and one things I know I have to process, what with tax season again and other services on the go, it got me to thinking about how sole-traders keep it together. Face it, it’s not just a working day we have to battle to organize, we also have to balance our home and personal lives and it can become a challenge.
With that in mind, I just HAD to translate and share this article written by Xavi Puig for “The Mundo Today”. If the title didn’t immediately catch your attention, the rest of the article definitely will and if you have the same sense of humour, it will make you laugh until you cry! So here goes, I’ve translated the article because it must be shared to help combat Friday Blues, or if you’re self-employed like me, Everyday Blues!
CSIC investigators will analyze the blood of hundreds of Spanish sole traders to better understand how it is they never get sick. They will also try to determine why they do not seem to require holidays or a stable family life to preserve their mental health.
“Sole traders are able to survive without any assurance of regular income and food. In some cases, they even manage to procreate. They don’t have a hump like camels, nor various stomachs like cows so it is a true miracle they survive is such precarious circumstances”, admits Dr. Israel Graulio, public servant of CSIC who describes sole traders as “an extraordinary and exotic lifeforms”.
Experts suspect that sole traders share qualities common with the first organisms formed on the Earth as they are able to flourish despite adverse conditions. “Many of them work without a contract. From my point of view after serving as a civil servant for the last 22 years, it is like watching a plant grow without soil and on top of a sheet of plastic”, insists Graulio.
Superhero Sole Traders
Scientists believe that if they can discover just how sole traders are able to survive in constant instability, under severe pressure for hours at a time, the rest of the human race may be able to overcome a multitude of illnesses and may not require the breaks that take away from their productivity during work hours.
“They key may be in the cold pizzas they eat in front of their computer screen. Or it could be the fact they do not leave their homes for days. This must be studied closely even though the mere thought of it makes me lose the will to live because of all the work involved”, the investigator goes on to say.
The CSIC has spent the last months experimenting with a “sole trader” subject whose blood is regularly tested. “It’s incredible. You can call him on a Sunday night and ask for something to be done yesterday and he’ll do it. Tell him you don’t know know how much or how you are going to pay for his services but he knows how it is, I’m not in a good situation and he will shrug his shoulders and tell you OK”, Dr. Graulio continues.
It is more than likely these experiments are externalized. “It is more practical for sole traders to perform these tests on themselves and forward us a detailed report as soon as possible. It will also work out cheaper for us.
OK, so this is obviously a joke but hey, it’s almost true! These past few nights I have been up until ridiculous o’clock processing accounts and ensuring I keep up with my daily workload. I was also ill a few weeks ago but as a sole trader I cannot allow myself the luxury to just crawl back into bed and hide until I recover, there is still work to be done and clients who depend on me getting my butt out of bed each day to make damn sure their paperwork, taxes etc go through within deadlines etc. We’re a rare breed :p
If you want to read the original article, please follow this link: Analizarán la sangre de los autónomos para investigar por qué nunca enferman
NOTE: All credit goes to Xavi Puig, the author of this hilarious article
