Visiting all fifty houses could take up to fifteen hours on a day of crisis. They had requested me to extend the round to twice daily, gathering opinions on the first round and then a collection of replies to each other’s opinions –or just a count of votes– on the way back.
When I had told them there were not enough hours in the day they responded in disbelief. Wasn’t I basically paid to do what I would do in my leisure time: go for hikes, drink lots of coffee, and talk with friends. Had I not written in my job application that I liked doing these things? I wanted to scream that my friends would never treat me this way, make me work so hard, destroying my health, stealing my time. I replied calmly that free time and work time were spent and experienced very differently.
The idea of making two rounds a day died out without much of a struggle. Even though they would never say it, they didn’t like to see me mad. I was their social glue, and they wanted to see me happy, to let this happiness rub off on them.