Just as the Department of Labor protects workers’ rights, promotes workplace safety, and advances job opportunities, the Department of Emotional Labor seeks to insure that vulnerable groups, such as customer-service employees, eldest daughters, and anyone whose co-workers think that D.E.I. is an outdoorsy retailer, are not exploited by being forced to take on an undue amount of work to make employers, customers, or emotionally immature parents more comfortable.

Following multiple reports of gross violations, the United States Department of Emotional Labor would like to issue the following reminders:

Wages and Hours

Emotional labor is labor, and should be compensated as such. The minimum wage for emotional labor was originally introduced by Sir Thomas More in his 1522 work “Four Last Things,” in which he coined the phrase “a penny for your thoughts,” effectively establishing the going hourly rate for emotional labor as one cent. Adjusting for inflation over the past 503 years, that penny is now equivalent to approximately $1,250, which is a more than reasonable fee for defusing tension upon being asked when you’re planning on having kids after you’ve been trying for three years.

Beyond pay, there has also been gross exploitation with regard to the number of hours workers have been forced to perform emotional labor, most commonly arising from having to listen to your friend who is going through an excruciating breakup with a partner you never liked. While the Emotional Labor Department encourages being there to support your friend, protections must be in place to prevent abuse. Effective immediately, breakup talk is now capped at 4.5 hours per week per party. This number is halved if the couple has broken up previously. If the couple has broken up more than twice, discussing said breakup will result in jail time.

Workplace Safety and Health

Those in service or client-facing roles who are required to maintain a pleasant demeanor are now allotted one “dick day” per week, whereby workers are permitted to drop their chipper veneers and be dicks back to customers who are being rude. Dick days do not roll over, so employees are advised to utilize them, and really get personal with targeted insults. Management cannot retaliate against employees exercising their federally protected dick-day rights.

Workers’ Compensation

If you are serving as your friend/parent/boss/partner’s unpaid therapist because they refuse to get a licensed one, you are entitled to invoice them at the aforementioned minimum-wage rate of $1,250 per hour.

If you dated an emotionally avoidant person who said, “I’m just not ready for a relationship,” three months before getting engaged to someone else, or anyone with a stick-and-poke thigh tattoo, you are entitled to reparations in the amount of $10,000 or one summer traipsing around Europe under the Eat, Pray, Love Act.

Unions

For any members of a union, including but not limited to marriage, partnerships where you’ve been introduced to their parents, or roommates you’ve lived with for three-plus years and have seen naked, the following union rules apply:

Serious conversations pertaining to the union are prohibited after 10 P.M., on federal holidays, or when one party literally just got home from work and needs thirty minutes to dissociate.

All union disputes must be resolved before attending weddings, funerals, or birthdays where you will be forced to act like everything is fine while quietly wondering, “Is this it—is this the fight that breaks us?”

Leaves of Absence

Workers are entitled to temporary leave from emotional labor during the following circumstances:

Violations

Noncompliance with the above rulings may result in fines, restitution, and apology issuance.

Apologies that begin with “I’m sorry you feel that way” will be considered null and void. Violators will be sentenced to mandatory reflection on their transgression while lying awake at 2 A.M., for twenty years to life. ♦