The Squatting Toad

At the beginning of our course, you mentioned The Squatting Toad in conjunction with a quote by William Faulkner that said "You cant eat for eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours a day-all you can do for eight hours{a day} is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy".
I think what you meant has to do with the poem entitled "Toads.

In the first paragraph the asks a question: “Why should I let the toad work / Squat on my life?” By comparing day-to-day office life to a toad, the author depicts the tedium of years sitting behind a desk, leaving no room for fun. The author directly compares work to a squatting toad. We learn that work dominates his life six days out of seven each week, month after month, year to year. The toad work paints a picture of a man being crushed by the squatting weight, “Just for paying a few bills!”

The squatting toad poem touches on a couple of work related factors such as finding work, where the poem talks about many people who “live on their wits." Other than lectureres, who make a living by teaching, the rest of the “folks” living on their wits — “lispers, / Losels, loblolly-men” and “louts” — have difficulties finding work. Lispers are those having or affecting the air of sophisticated culture, a losel is literally a “worthless person”; a lout is considered a “clumsy, stupid fellow.” These people manage to “live on their wits” without ending up as paupers, or common beggars, as perhaps society expects of those who reject conventional careers.

The author continues to focus on the people who seem to get by without working.
He also talks about “their unspeakable wives,” implying that the male made the decision on work, reflecting the “male as breadwinner” This touches on the key term we worked on in the semester of gender roles in work. many companies reward their long-time employees by offering them a pension, or paid compensation, at the time of their retirement. So even if you have to “slave away” your life for twenty years or more, at least when you reach a certain age you can stop working and continue to collect monthly paychecks.

We learn the toad might not be alone “for something sufficiently toad-like / Squats in me, too.” This is the author talking about himself, having toad-like tendencies. It is in his nature to work six days a week and a squatting toad is like working six days a week at the office.