I vow to never talk about work on this blog. The simple reason? People that I work with actually know about my website, and any information I post will be scrutinized by them. The real reason? Because work is too boring to talk about, and I don’t want to put all of you to sleep.

Now I’m not saying my work is boring, because that’s far from the truth. What I’m saying is that talking about work is boring. If I wrote in this blog space that about my day at work, you’d be bored to tears. Let’s test my theory out.

Would you stop reading if I told you that on this very day, I wrote a recursive query using 3 right outer joins in each iteration. This query tied together data from 4 different sources, all spanning a different information system. This very same query essentially solved a problem that would have taken anyone else in my workplace upwards of 6-8 hours to complete (and at that rate, they probably wouldn’t have been half as accurate).

What if I told you that for completing this very elusive query, someone offered me a $20 Chipotle gift card? (Note: I’m a public employee, so I would never accept such extravagant gifts). What if I told you that seeing this query to completion took me a total of 20 minutes? What if I told you that this happens daily at my work?

That would mean that I had earned one burrito dollar per minute! In 6-7 minutes, I would have earned a burrito (8 minutes if I would have gone with the guac.. and anyone who knows me KNOWS that I always go with the guac!).

That would be an extraordinary rate of return had I accepted the gift. $1/minute. If I factor in my average wage per minute, for that 20 minute period I stood to make $1.47/minute.

So this leads me to believe that I am truly worth $1.47/minute. My rate per minute falls somewhere in between a high level consultant and phone sex operator. Multiply my per minute rate by an average 40 hour work week, and I stand to make a lot of money.

$1.47/minute x 60 minutes x 8 hours x 5 days x 52 weeks = $183,456.

That’s right, Chipotle gift card math has helped me establish that I am currently worth a little over $183k a year.

This leads me to my dillemma; how long can I continue to be paid at my current rate, while realizing that my talent and skills could be much more lucrative elsewhere? How much can loyalty to a public institution account for in the long run? I guess I’ll find out soon enough…..