Anyway, the woman two treadmills down from me was the epitome of a clod hopper! Every step she took on the machine you would have thought that she was going to go through the floor. I’ll never understand why some people don’t pick up their feet when they get on the treadmills, but you know what? This woman was going at a pretty good pace and she was burning calories like it was her job. Impressive…

But still funny!

The other funny observation that I had at the gym today was the guy on the treadmill next to me. For those of you that go on these treadmills you know that you can increase the incline on the machine to simulate the going up hill effect. It’s actually a great way to burn more calories over the course of a week. Anyway, this guy get on the treadmill next to me and sets the incline at such a ridiculous level that he’s practically falling off of the machine! It was pretty funny – he couldn’t even swing his arms as he was walking because he had to hold on to the top of the machine to stay on it.

Clod hoppers and mountain climbers…hilarious!

Really?

Let’s think about that in real figures for a minute. If America was losing 20,000 jobs each day, that would be 140,000 jobs lost each week. There have absolutely been horrible announcements about new sets of layoffs each week. But if this country was losing 20,000 jobs each day, that would mean that we’re losing 7.3 million jobs each year. Ahem…losing seven million, three hundred thousand jobs each year.

This is clearly not the case. Think about it in terms of real jobs: Wal-Mart employs about 2.1 million people; McDonald’s employs some 400 thousand; Home Depot employs about 330 thousand; Bank of America has around 172 thousand employees; and Macy’s has about 182 thousand people currently employed. Combined, you’re still looking at approximately 3,180,000 workers – less than half of what the woman on the show this morning was fear mongering about.

If you believe what this fear monger believes with respect to America losing jobs, then you might believe that more than double of the equivalent amount of total jobs provided by Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Home Depot, Bank of America, and Macy’s will be gone in a twelve month time period.

The economy is in a rough period right now and it might last for a few more weeks, months, or even years. But when people go around trying to sell fear like this it does nothing to help get the nation’s psyche back where it needs to be.

Anyway, check out New Jersey Carpet Cleaning for the best carpet cleaning in the Garden State!