Off Minor

One of our regular customers at work is NHL player Dion Phaneuf. He’s a defenseman for the Calgary Flames. In the past week, Phaneuf signed a new contract that will earn him a cool $39-million for the next six seasons. To put things into perspective, that’s $6.5-million per year, $17,808.22 each day of the year or $12.37 every minute. That absurd amount of money is being paid to a man to skate in circles and shoot a puck. Don’t get me wrong – I really do like hockey. I just don’t think players should be making that much, especially not someone like Phaneuf.

Why? Perhaps it’s his swagger when he walks into the store, his air of superiority. Perhaps it’s how every time he walks up to the counter he’s blathering away on a cell phone, pulling it away from his head long enough to bark an order at us. Perhaps it’s the way he pulls up in the fire lane when there’s ample parking twenty feet away in a real parking stall. Perhaps it’s that the last tip he gave us was a whopping $0.04 – an amount he made back in less time than it took to drop the pennies into the jar. Or perhaps it’s because he’s just kind of an all-around jerk.

Or more likely, a healthy combination of all of the above.