RICHFIELD — A comprehensive new report released this week confirms what rural Utah has long known: during the general deer season opener, the entire regional economy is operated, single-handedly and without complaint, by women named Sharlene.
The study, conducted over three openers, found that while an estimated 97% of the able-bodied population was in the hills wearing blaze orange and eating gas-station burritos out of a cooler, every café, hardware store, school office, tire shop, and courthouse in a six-county radius remained open, staffed exclusively by Sharlenes — a workforce researchers described as “unyielding” and “already aware of what you need before you finish the sentence.”
“We cross-referenced payroll data, school attendance, and who was physically standing behind the counter at the Sinclair,” said the report’s lead author. “It’s Sharlenes all the way down. One Sharlene covered the diner, the parts counter, and, we believe, the entire concept of the county fair for a full weekend.”
School districts reported attendance in the low double digits, with classes consolidated into a single room supervised by — according to the report — also a Sharlene, who taught math, history, and “why your father will come home smelling like a campfire whether he gets one or not.”
Economists noted the opener causes no measurable dip in productivity, a phenomenon they attribute to the Sharlenes simply doing, in eight hours, everything the returning hunters will spend the following week describing as a team effort.
At press time, the hunters had begun returning, sunburned in the shape of sunglasses, telling stories whose deer grew measurably larger with each retelling, while the Sharlenes quietly restocked the state.
Photo: lovz2hike, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons