The Early Bird Gets the Worm

But the late worm lives another day.

My former residence, Columbus, oHIo, sort of prides itself on being a city of "morning people." Breakfast meetings are not uncommon. Rush hour was heaviest around 7:00 am. I remember seeing an article in one of the business magazines boasting about hard-working Buckeyes being up and at 'em so early in the morning, so enterprising, so eager to get to their cubicle farms. The tradeoff - a downtown nearly devoid of life by 6:00 pm - didn't seem to bother the authors.

So what? So some people are up at 4:30 to do their laundry or walk the dog or clip their toenails. Are later hours not just as good for getting these things done? Why do some people insist that being up early has anything to do with productivity? One of those people: a coworker at one of my former places of employment who lived an hour's drive from Columbus. When I would stumble in at 8:30 (the last employee to arrive), she would stride over to my desk, clap her hands in my face, bend down towards my chair, and crow, "Good morning, Miss Kim. You're not looking too chipper today. I've been here since 7:30 and I worked out at the gym before I got here. And I live in Town-An-Hour's-Drive-Away! You need to get up and moving around earlier!"

Why? Was the work I did between 8:30 and 5:30 somehow not good enough because I wasn't up earlier? Because I didn't live far enough away to win the Chipper Commuter Award? I held the snarliness in check and tried to diffuse my irritation with humor. "Well", I would say, "I'm just on Mountain Standard Time. Pretend I'm in Colorado."

One day she merrily exclaimed, "The early bird gets the worm, you know!" This is one of my least-favorite cliches. (Another is "Grow where you're planted," but that's a whole other post.) With a smile that was more like baring my fangs, I turned in my chair. "What if you're not the bird?" I said, my mouth so clenched I barely moved my lips. "What if you're the worm? If you're a worm, you don't want to be an early worm - the early bird will be waiting for you. So if you're a worm, wouldn't it make sense to come later, after the bird's gone home for a nap?"

There was little comprehension that morning is not everybody's high-energy time. Soon it didn't matter, because I quit and I now work at a place where no one thinks I'm lazy for coming in at the civilized hour of 9:00 am.

And that early bird employee? I heard she got fired a month ago.