Are you a 'Gruntled' Employee?

By I.J. Hudson

I apologize in advance.  

I love words.  I love how we use and abuse them,  how we assemble them into phrases and clichés to the point that we can’t change their order without ‘sounding’ a bit funny. 

I heard a friend use the phrase, "pony and dog show" the other day.  It just wasn't the same.  

And then there's the drilled into us phrase. Example:  please fill-in the blank.  They ____ escaped with their lives.  I’m betting very few put WIDELY in the blank.  It’s almost always narrowly.   “Widely” suggests it wasn’t all that exciting.

Another required phrase:  denizens of the ____.   I’m thinking DEEP is what most of us put there.  It’s tough not to use the comfortable, what we’ve heard from everyone else.

Hey, it’s Christmas Eve, so I want to keep this short.  I had a brief discussion with a colleague about “disgruntled.”  You know, “the suspect is a disgruntled employee.”  How about a gruntled employee?  Yep, it’s a word.  And while you never hear it (you’ve probably never even read it),  it’s good to know there are folks who enjoy work.

Tonight I’m a pretty gruntled employee, even though I’m on call and hoping that a special denizen of the North Pole widely escapes any traffic that's in the skies and drops in with some cool toys.