Your Unemployed Daughter

This morning, as I was heading over to the coffee pot for a fresher-up, a song popped into my head … a song you might remember from a movie digitally remastered during your youth, and that is, of course, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Ignoring the more obvious social implications of this film—Snow White gets in with the dwarves, who she first assumes to be a group of messy orphans, through her cooking and cleaning prowess, becoming their mom/wife figure; they in turn assert their collective manhood by preventing several of the queen’s nasty plots and eventually hook their gal up with a hottie who can pay her bills—let’s consider our dwarves and their occupation.

First off, their names: Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey.* Are those not simply descriptions of how each of us have felt on the job at one point or another?

And then, their actual gig: they work in a mine. Which, I hear, is pretty dangerous, but perhaps being dwarves they are more likely to wiggle out of scrapes? Or maybe that’s just height-ist of me.

Anyway, these seven little dudes work in a mine, and each day they head off cheerily to a dark, dank jobsite, clearly not up to code and from which they have no certainty of returning, to do back-breaking work. And instead of stopping at the nearest pub to drown their sorrows in Jäger when they clock out at 5 pm sharp, they march and sing happily all the way home.

Even while they’re sweating away with their pickaxes working for God-knows-who, they sing:

We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig from early morn till night
We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig up everything in sight
We dig up diamonds by the score
A thousand rubies, sometimes more
But we don’t know what we dig ‘em for
We dig dig dig a-dig dig

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Snow White and friends whistle while they work:

Just whistle while you work
And cheerfully together we
can tidy up the place….
When hearts are high
the time will fly so
whistle while you work

And here’s another one who truly loves her day job (she’s French, but that makes it better, IMO. Très zèle!).

To what can we attribute this sheer joy at one’s daily chores and occupations? Is it a Depression-era Disney trying to convince America to stick with it? Or do dwarves and princesses and evil queens just naturally come with a good work ethic?

Either way, I’d like a little bit of whatever they’re having when tackling my day-to-day.

Perhaps we should make it a test of job satisfaction: If, on a fairly regular basis, you find yourself humming (or at least not screaming in pain) on the way to work, you know you’re one of the lucky seven. If not, there are openings for “knight in shining armor/prince in red technicolor cloak” all over this damn town.

*Our dear Wikipedia reveals some of the rejected (hilarious) dwarf names: Blabby, Jumpy, Shifty, Snoopy, Awful, Baldy, Biggo-Ego, Biggy, Biggy-Wiggy, Burpy, Busy, Chesty, Cranky, Daffy, Dippy, Dirty, Dizzy, Doleful, Flabby, Gabby, Gloomy, Goopy, Graceful, Helpful, Hoppy, Hotsy, Hungrey, Jaunty, Lazy, Neurtsy, Nifty, Puffy, Sappy, Sneezy-Wheezy, Sniffy, Scrappy, Silly, Soulful, Strutty, Stuffy, Sleazy, Tearful, Thrifty, Tipsy, Titsy, Tubby, Weepy, Wistful, and Woeful.