Word Problem

Every job's going to cause a certain amount of grief (g) - that's just the nature of the beast. Some jobs cause more grief than others. Grief is counterbalanced by your satisfaction (s) in the work you do. And then, of course, you get a paycheck (P), which can be used to buy cute shoes (and also exciting underwear; but since we're talking about the workplace here, I'll limit the discussion to shoes for the purposes of this argument) to make up for any deficit between the amount of satisfaction you get and the amount of grief you have to put up with.

In the most simplistic terms, this concept can be mathematically expressed thus:

x = Shoes + (s - g)

where x represents how advisable it is to hang onto your current job, a negative value indicating you might want to think about looking around. The lower the value, of course, the less likely you are to have a whole lot of choice in the matter anyway.

Of course, "Shoes" is also a big variable in that different people have different levels of disposable (aka shoe-purchasing) income. If you have other family members (m), not only is your cost of living (c) higher, but other family members may have other priorities (wtf) for the disposal of said disposable income.

So:

Shoes = P - [(c*m) + (wtf*m)]

So here's your assignment.

For my regular students (aka ordinary folks): Given a supervisory structure whose only concept of management is to get on employees' cases about their attendance and break times, with neither regard to nor particular interest in the quality of work performed; and given job duties that range from mildly interesting but fairly pointless at best to downright insulting at worst; calculate how quickly a mother of three with a three-pair-a-month Payless habit will start looking for another job.

For my advanced students (aka major employers): Discuss how much you are willing to pay said mother of three to, using only her sharp intellect, engaging personality, cute shoes, and exciting underwear, boost morale and improve productivity in your workplace.

Resume and references available upon request!