Another wonderful day on extended unemployment benefits! I’m sure you’re wondering how I waste your hard-earned tax dollars with my copious amounts of free money from the government. Let me walk you through a day in my life, or what I like to call “Lifestyles of the Lifeless!”

12:00 PM – Wake Up. I have nothing to do, but I still choose to get up early and bask in the glow of my privilege. It’s easy to sleep soundly when you are making a whopping $300 a week.

I try to make sure I get a good twelve hours a night. Sure, I spend half of it tossing and turning, thinking about the bills I’m incapable of paying and the impending future I’m completely unprepared for, but a quick shower is enough to wash away the layer of sweat I wake up in and start the day refreshed and terrified.

1:00 PM – Eat breakfast. I enjoy some eggs (fresh, organic, free-range), toast (homemade sourdough), butter (pricey Irish butter) because I have plenty of time in my day of uselessness to enjoy a hearty breakfast. I find throwing most of it up promptly afterward keeps me from getting a big head.

2:00 PM – “Job Hunt.” Ha! No, I don’t waste my time “job hunting” for hours every day. Job hunting is nothing but a waste of time. In the past, I sent out hundreds of applications a week, most of which were never read because they were filtered out by a robot that decided the formatting on my résumé negates my decade of experience, or were for positions that likely don’t exist. To make the best use of my day, I try to invent a time machine that can take me back so I can set my mom up with a wealthy Harvard grad, giving me a leg up on the job market. That way, I can be born rich, connected, a man, and maybe even a little younger.

2:42 PM – Nap. All that was exhausting, time for a much-needed siesta!

4:00 PM – Shopping. I order useless crap I don’t need because I have so much income overflow. Also, to fill the growing hole inside of me.

6:00 PM – Dinner. I round up two or three of my equally unemployed friends and head out for a night on the town! With $300 a week, the world is our oyster! (It’s actually less than that after taxes. Did you know they tax unemployment? It makes a lot of sense because we’re already receiving so much.)

We, of course, go to the most expensive and understaffed restaurant in town. We take a group shot of ourselves with the HELP WANTED sign in the window on the way in. Then we order drinks, appetizers, entrées, and desserts, making sure that at least one of those courses is dusted in gold. On our way out, we spit on all the gainfully employed diners spending their hard-earned wages while convincing at least one of the staff members to quit and join us: the unemployed elite. The government loves to shovel money at anyone, regardless of why they are no longer working. As we leave, we pass the poor, struggling small business owners.

“Please, work for us! We’ll do anything!” they plead as we pass, glittering in all of our expensive jewels.

“OK!” we say every time, “Just pay us a living wage — with full benefits!”

“But, we couldn’t possibly! We’d go bankrupt!” The poor, humble restaurant owners cry.

“Well, then I guess we’ll stay unemployed,” we say as we offer them bundles of money to dry their pathetic, capitalist tears. Those poor, hard-working schmucks!

Just kidding! Got you, didn’t I? No, not to fear, I don’t do that. I don’t have the time! I’m too busy eating plain pasta with cheese, flipping through Netflix, never watching anything because I can’t make a decision, and then crying on the phone to my mom for an hour.

10:16 PM – Time to wind down after another beautiful day on unemployment benefits. I take a moment to reflect on the impossible circumstances of a pandemic that shut down my place of employment with absolutely no warning, and how that is actually somehow my fault. I say a prayer that I can once again be a useful member of society.

Got you again! Of course I don’t pray; I am a godless communist bent on destroying America.

11:00 PM – I finally drift to sleep when I run out of disaster scenarios for what will happen when my benefits end. Ah! What an extravagant life!