Leave your job for 2 hours and watch the United States play Germany

For America, for truth, for liberty, and because there is nothing your boss can do about it

If you leave work early to watch the United States play Germany, there will be no lost productivity, because it is a lie. Other countries with over two hundred years of history know this already: productivity is a fiction, and the average adult has something like four and a half or five hours of actual work time a day. The rest is creative accounting, a lie told by managers to managers to justify their existence. Your wages have been effectively flat for the better part of a decade, anyway.

Take that flat money to the bar, and come back after the U.S. is done beating Germany.

If your excuse for not leaving your office and joining the rest of America at the bar is "I have to do my job," congrats! You're already so, so wrong. It's Thursday, and chances are you've already done your job for the week. Medical personnel are excused, or may perform essential operations and the birthing of babies on sterilized bar tables. Teachers and day care workers, just leave the kids in a locked room for two hours with some snacks. It's what our parents did, and we don't even remember it and are obviously FINE.

Finance personnel were unnecessary anyway, so leave and don't come back to the office. It's probably best for all of us if y'all don't ever show up again, ever. Just stay home, and learn a trade, and watch soccer and stop ruining the world.

But I have a meeting. No you don't. You should never have meetings ever again, anyway, not unless you are doing any of the following.

1. Are NASA, and are building a rocket to absolutely dominate another planet like Mars or one of the other solid-like ones you can land on and build casinos
2. Are the President, and need to organize a rescue mission for your wife and daughter that you will play an improbably large physical role in, like "punching terrorist out of Air Force One" or something

Everything else is superfluous.

But I can only meet from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m today. Life is testing you. Pass this test by never meeting this person, deleting their phone number and email from your phone, and if necessary by throwing your phone out of a window. They are a garbage person seeking to siphon away your time, a mason whose only joy in life is entombing others in their boredom. You will not be a star victim in their horror movie. You will do the right thing, and cancel this meeting forever for the game and your own well-being.

And if all else fails, you will Bartleby the Scrivener the hell out of this, American citizen. Your boss asks you to stay? "I would prefer not to," is the reply as you walk out the door and promise to return at 2:30 or so. Your boss threatens to fire you? "I would prefer not to, and I will see you at 2:30," you repeat, waving a cheerful goodbye as you put on your Tony Meola jersey and leave the office as promised. "I would prefer not to," you tell the cop as he puts the cuffs on you, and takes you to jail. That does not work as well, mind you, but if you are polite he may let you watch the game on your phone before you get to central booking.

It's two hours out of your life, and barring you being one of the actual two percent of workers who keep things from literally bursting into flames at any minute, you have no excuse. Jurgen Klinsmann needs you. Clint Dempsey needs you. Kyle Beckerman needs you, and not just because he's lost and needs directions to the stadium. Our nation's bars and pubs and drinking establishments need you to provide the economic stimulus we, as a country that works too much and drinks too little, deny our barkeeps: a mid-day influx of alcohol purchases into the coffers of America's finest people, our bartenders.

What is the World Cup if you don't learn the best practices of other countries and make them your own? We've already done that with soccer by tearing the mainframe of the German soccer machine and calling it our own. Let's do that with life, and do what everyone else learned long, long ago: shut down the country for two hours to watch a soccer game, and you will miss nothing important in life whatsoever. Money is a lie, your job is probably not that important, and if you do get fired for being too American, well, that's clearly against a law that even if fictional should exist anyway.

P.S. Don't worry about your wrongful firing case not holding up in court. The judge is at the end of the bar, and he will adjudicate the case on the spot in your favor.