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April 26, 2005
"Aren't you a little short for a Director?"
April 28th is "Bring your daughter or son to work" day.
Jack won't be participating. Neither Fabulous Babe or I are interested in subjecting our offices to the full "Jack experience" just yet. Not that it wouldn't provide some comic relief.
In the beginning I found this holiday to be pretty craptacular. Originally it seemed to have been thought up by angry feminists and "womyn" with axes to grind. (Mostly reminding me of the horrible "Womens literature" class I was stuck in at University.) The holiday began life as "Bring your daughters to work" day. Boys, being icky of course, were unnecessary and their participation wasn't desired as they represented the future of the oppressive class. *sigh*
Thankfully the super majority of reasonable people in our country, mostly parents, said "Hold it a second there sparky" and mandidated the fix so that little boys could participate as well. (I'm always skeptical when an oppressed class of victims feels that to succeed they need to oppress another class.) The first year I saw both boys and girls it seemed to work out fine.
Last year there were very few kids in my office. I remember a few but not any overwhelming numbers. From what I've seen the kids get pretty bored after the first few hours. The stuff they want to play with is denied to them and the stuff they can play with generally sucks. "See honey? The staple remover is like a fish! See?"
I think the best path in our case for the future will be for us to split Jack up between us for a day. That way he isn't too bored and he doesn't totally wreck a complete day. We've got years to plan this and knowing Fabulous Babe she'll have a Powerpoint worked up by Thursday for me.
Really the idea isn't to force kids into a career of their parents choosing. The idea is to expose kids to what their parents do for a living. (Which in some cases may prove to be so scary the kids run.) Children often times see the world more clearly than adults do. Last year one of the kids in attendance was asked what they thought and candidly pointed out that the meetings took too long because all the grownups did was repeat what the others said. She wanted to know why someone didn't lead the meeting so that it wouldn't take so much time.
I would pay $500 to have videotape of the managers face when she said that.
If you have a kid that's old enough to participate I think dragging them out of school on Thursday and having them tag along is highly appropriate.
Posted by Jim at April 26, 2005 12:38 AM