April 21, 2004
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Take Your Kid to Work (Really)
Tomorrow is take your kid to work day, formerly take your daughter to work day. Why has my company set up a bunch of activities- essentially a day care program for the kids? Call me crazy, but I don't think my sons want to spend the day in our cafeteria with a bunch of dressed-up kids they don't know being lectured by someone from HR.
The reason, of course, is that we all want to shield the innocent from the inanity of the workplace. I vote for openness. Let's give the kids a taste of today's high pressure productive workplace. Here's a draft schedule:
- 8:00 purchase and consume second cup of coffee
- 8:15 complain to colleagues about yesterday's meetings
- 8:30 purchase and drink third cup of coffee
- 8:45 surf internet
- 9:05 show up late for meeting with underlings/people from other departments
- 9:20 choose underling to ask unfair and embarassing questions
- 9:30 check Blackberry while in meeting; exchange email with another guy in the meeting
- 9:40 Idly pick up Blackberry from guy sitting next to you, send fake email to his wife ('hey hot lips, see you tonight, I've decided to try the enlargement, what are you wearing?')
- 9:45 visit several colleagues on way back from meeting; bring newspaper to bathroom; regret coffee consumption
- 10:05 wait for boss/people from other departments to show up at meeting. Make sure there aren't any women there and tell dirty joke to other peons
- 10:10 Make something up when boss wants to know what's so funny
- 10:20 answer boss' unfair and embarassing questions
- 10:30 slouch quietly in meeting staring at Day Planner trying not to be assigned as the one to 'follow up'
- 10:45 trace paper clip on meeting agenda
- 10:50 Whisper you have another meeting and bail
- 10:55 walk over to rambunctious colleagues and complain about colleague, office technology
- 11:00 return (most) messages; forward emails that look like work to someone else with 'please advise' and 'FYI' at the top, CCing senior colleagues
- 11:15 show up late for department head meeting
- 11:30 (in department head meeting) Acknowledge major threat to business without complete verbalization. Stare awkwardly at colleagues. Finally, postpone obvious action plan, assign junior staff to 'follow up' with more research 'necessary' to avoid a 'rash and risky decision'. Agree heartily that decisive action will be forthcoming once 'due diligence' complete and unscheduled future 'subgroup' meets.
- 12:00 Crisis averted! Lunchtime.
Oh, well. I guess the Duke alumni won't be missing much by sleeping past 8 a.m.
Actually, if you can convince your kids to drink those three cups of coffee (try a white-chocolate mocha or similar if they refuse the straight-up stuff), I think the boardroom meeting will get a whole lot more entertaining.
7.00: Pick up paper from stoop.
7.01-7.25: Thumb through job listings over instant coffee.
7.30: Take kids to school on bus. Get in argument with bus driver over "fact" that seven-year-old is under five and should ride for free. Lose argument.
8.10: Gaze longingly at large coffee cup at Starbucks near school; opt for medium due to unforseen 25 cent loss towards seven-year-old's bus fare.
8.55: Back at house.
9.00-10.15: Call several temp agencies, discuss possibilities of openings next month.
10.16-4.15: Boot up computer, write several posts on blog extolling President Bush's work towards a full economic recovery and jobs for all.
4.20: Bus it over to pick up kids at school.
5.25: Stop at corner store with kids on way back from school.
5.37: Ring up puchases at register.
5.38: Curse self for forgetting food stamps at home.
5.39: Run in front of bus.
Several years ago I wanted to produce a poster promoting Take Your Guns to Work Day. Google shows no hits for that phrase, so: imagine a guy in a cubicle polishing one of his many guns, smiling as he does so. Co-workers crowd around his cubicle admiring his collection.
A Day in the Life : way too boring for kids.
8.00am. Get up, let out dogs.
Commute to work.
8.02 am. Email, online newspaper, blog, google research. Drink coffee.
10.00am. Walk dogs.
10.45 am. Email, blog, research on net.
1.00pm. Lunch. Sea Bream, rice, potatoes, salad, olives, glass and 1/2 wine, 6 euros.
1.45 pm. Drop in on wife at work for coffee.
2.00 pm. Email, blog, research.
3.00 pm. Talk to factory about production.
3.10 pm. Talk to customer about delay in production.
3.15 pm. Email, blog, research.
4.30 pm. Ride bike around Portugal for hour.
5.30 pm. Walk dogs.
6.30 pm. Email , blog, research.
8.00 pm. Go to pub with wife. Dinner.
I just don't see kids, or anyone else for that matter, being interested in or inspired by this work / life relationship.
Hmmm, you've omitted the after lunch task of 'Seeth quietly and wish for a better job'.
Your meeting times are too short. I could fill up two whole days with what you've got listed.
You didn't mention day-dreaming about winning the lottery.
You didn't mention any job-hunting.
You didn't mention finding a way to walk past a sexy co-workers office.
What about office gambling?
What about all the work time we spend reading blogs, writing blogs, scanning the news for possible blogging topics, etc? There's a whole world there that kids could learn about. In fact, maybe the blogging community should declare a "Take Your Child Blogging" day, on which bloggers with kids (or who can borrow kids) teach them how to blog and let them post entries of interest to them. Now that would be an educational day.
Not an optimal schedule - there were a couple of locations where productivity was creeping in...
God knows I tried, but when your kids are 47 and 43, and you have a home office, and they have jobs of their own, it is hard to convince them. Perhaps next year.
I have mixed feelings about Kid's day. On the one hand, it is a dumb relic of the feminist hysteria of the 90s.
On the other hand, it reveals the class structure of the office, and the BS of the diversity clan with a vengeance. Things that one cannot help but observe:
1. The exec corp, which professes diversity above all else is lilly white.
2. White kids are virtually non-existent. This is because it is predominantly white women who buy the feminist bilge.
3. Black and hispanic women love to have children.
4. The lilly white exec corp thinks that people who love to have children are dumb and backward. In other words, they adore blacks and hispanics in the abstract. In reality, they believe they are stupid.
5. For a day, the PC tomb of the office melts and everybody becomes giddy with sex. Children are, after all, the real purpose of sex.
The bizarre split between work and personal environment has become insane, and Kid's day only makes this more obvious. At work, we must pretend to be enthralled by the dictates of PC. As soon as we leave work, we turn on the porn, peruse the personal ads and head out to the concert by somebody like Janet Jackson or Britney Spears. We must be prudes and censors at work. We are libertines and revolutionaries as soon as work is over.
What a crock!
Speak for yourself, Stephen! I knock up all kinds of women at work, but when I get home I pull out my trusty peashooter and tag all those troublesome neighbor kids with rocksalt!
Seriously though . . . when I was a kid (1960s) my dad took us to work once in a while . . . on Saturdays, when he was getting some extra stuff done.
I take my kids to work . . . on Saturdays. I catch up on things while they drink soda, play with the coffee machine and watch videos in the conference room. They clean up after themselves when they are done, which is about the most valuable work-related lesson I can think of, and which puts them miles ahead of most of their cohort.
That's all they need to know about work. That, and where the bathroom is.
WASHINGTON, DC—Tensions were running high Tuesday as Americans nervously explained their jobs, gave workplace tours, and introduced their bastard children to coworkers on National "Take Your Illegitimate Daughter To Work" Day. ...
Just in case you missed it.
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