Workers’ Compensation
If you are serving as your friend/parent/boss/partner’s unpaid therapist because they refuse to get a licensed one, you are entitled to invoice them at the aforementioned minimum-wage rate of $1,250 per hour.
If you dated an emotionally avoidant person who said, “I’m just not ready for a relationship,” three months before getting engaged to someone else, or anyone with a stick-and-poke thigh tattoo, you are entitled to reparations in the amount of $10,000 or one summer traipsing around Europe under the Eat, Pray, Love Act.
Unions
For any members of a union, including but not limited to marriage, partnerships where you’ve been introduced to their parents, or roommates you’ve lived with for three-plus years and have seen naked, the following union rules apply:
Serious conversations pertaining to the union are prohibited after 10 P.M., on federal holidays, or when one party literally just got home from work and needs thirty minutes to dissociate.
All union disputes must be resolved before attending weddings, funerals, or birthdays where you will be forced to act like everything is fine while quietly wondering, “Is this it—is this the fight that breaks us?”
Leaves of Absence
Workers are entitled to temporary leave from emotional labor during the following circumstances:
- Bachelor or bachelorette trips exceeding 48 hours (72 if international)
- Family vacations where you are staying as a guest at a relative’s home and regress to your teen-age self
- Bereavement over friendship breakups, stemming from the realization that you were doing all the reaching out, and, when you stopped, never heard from them again
- People keep telling you that you’ve had a “rough year”
Violations
Noncompliance with the above rulings may result in fines, restitution, and apology issuance.
Apologies that begin with “I’m sorry you feel that way” will be considered null and void. Violators will be sentenced to mandatory reflection on their transgression while lying awake at 2 A.M., for twenty years to life. ♦
