“Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.”
Robert Benchley · Chips off the Old Benchley, 1949
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The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible.
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About this quote
Meaning
This line captures the universal experience of waking up feeling groggy and out of sorts, even when nothing is actually wrong. Kerr is gently mocking the idea that a well-functioning life automatically means bounding out of bed full of energy. The joke is that feeling terrible in the morning is not a sign of failure but a perfectly normal feature of being human. There is comfort in the acknowledgment that even healthy, stable people drag themselves through those first waking minutes.
Context
The line comes from Jean Kerr's 1957 essay collection Please Don't Eat the Daisies, a book built around the comic frustrations of domestic life. Kerr was known for finding absurdity and warmth in everyday situations, and the collection became a bestseller, later adapted for film and television. This particular observation sits well within that tone: it takes something almost too mundane to mention and turns it into a small, shared truth delivered with a perfectly timed deadpan.
About the author
Jean Kerr was an American writer and playwright whose work found a wide audience in the mid-twentieth century. She was particularly skilled at writing humor rooted in recognizable domestic experience, and her essays and plays often blended wit with genuine affection for the chaos of family life. Her voice was sharp but never unkind, and her ability to make ordinary frustrations funny earned her a lasting place in American comic writing.
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