Dilemma (di-lem’-ma): Offering to an opponent a choice between two (equally unfavorable) alternatives.
I had hit a fork in the road of life. I had to make choice. A big choice. My boss had given me a choice: clean the office every morning before work, or file minimum of 200 files per day. The extra duties would be in addition to my existing duties which involved cold calls to potential clients in the coal shipping business. One option afforded me physical exertion, the other offered me tedious paper shuffling. Neither option included a wage increase for the added responsibilities.
Cleaning the office would be difficult. Every morning the office a total mess made by the slobs who work there. Coffee containers and half eaten sandwiches littered the floor, along with crumpled-up paper balls that missed the wastebasket. I would be exhausted by the end of the day. Cleaning the office, and cold calls too, would probably kill me.
Filing was not my forte. I would have to read each document in order to know where to file it. I would be scanning everything from lunch receipts to contracts, making an electronic filing system as I went. Packed onto my cold calls, this would be laborious, and probably kill me.
Given that either option ended in death, as far as I could see, I should quit my job. But inflation is raging, and jobs are scarce. Maybe I wouldn’t die from my new duties. That was a risk I had to take.
POSTSCRIPT
He chose filing because it had less manual labor than cleaning the office. In addition, he could drink coffee while he filed.
Unfortunately, he got a deep paper cut on his index finger that became seriously infected. The sepsis spread to his hand. His hand had t be amputated. While he was being operated on under sedation, he died of a heart attack.
