Principled

I had a thought at work today, hearkening back to a conversation we had the other day. The pharmacists usually complain that the pharmacy is too cold while the technicians complain about it being too hot. This discrepancy is easily attributed to the fact that pharmacists typically stand in place while technicians move around doing actual work.

This brought me to the comparison of a wage-worker's exertions compared to a salaried worker's exertions and the notion of a hard/honest day's work. This does not hold true across all professions but in the general scheme a wage worker is concerned with physical matters while a salaried worker is paid for the benefit of his mind.

My thought, and the reason for this post, was a simple exchange between a white collar and a blue collar when there was physical work to be done (perhaps a shelf had fallen and the mess needed picked up) and the white collar left it to the blue collar.

The blue collar asks, "How about you help me clean this mess up?"
The white collar responds, "It's a matter of principles."
The blue collar asks, "You're principled?"
"Yes."
"Huh, that's a mighty long word for lazy."

However, I was just reminded of a most delightful word: sesquipedalian. Sesquipedalian as an adjective refers to an overly long or multi-syllabic word or one who uses overly long words. So the exchange becomes a bit more subtle and impenetrable if the blue collar responds, "Huh, that's a rather sesquipedalian term for lazy."