Gah, it is almost upon us again. Tomorrow is "Bring Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day", something that often makes the office unpleasant. There's an insightful piece in the WSJ [this link is a pdf on my site]today on this very subject, but it misses my major annoyance with the issue.
It mentions the boredom of the children, but for me, as the coworker of the parent, this is the main problem. When a kid shows up at the office with mom or dad, it's interesting for about five minutes. After the new environment wears off, they are bored silly. Worse, many schools discourage the kids taking off for this day so parents bring toddlers, the kids with the very shortest attention spans.
They drive the parent nuts, then the parent gives up, and soon the kids are running around in the halls making noise. This is totally non-conducive to work for me AND for the parent. I've come in to the office, but I can't get anything done. Neither can they, and yet I didn't get the benefit of having the day off and neither have they.
Now, when I was middle-school age, I did go to work with my dad on a Saturday. I was plonked in front of a computer, and I had a great time playing Unix games, especially Colossal Cave Adventure, but the only reason this worked is because no one else was around. Also, most people don't have a spare computer for the kids to bang on all day.
The article gives good coverage to why this isn't so hot for the kid, if you're interested in that side of the argument.
My employer was actually pretty smart about the whole bring your child to work day. They actually sett up something for one of our big confrence rooms for teh kids so they weren't wandering about. Having them sit in what is sort oof like a meeting actually acurately reflects what a LOT of people in my office do all day.
Posted by Paul at April 28, 2005 12:55 PMWell, well.....I made the blog! Yes and you left out the part about playing Adventure on a TI Silent 700 and a Teletype Model 43. Of course you'd not want to admit that would you?
However, as I remember, it was a mainframe game running on Tymshare's 3033. Could be wrong here. Didn't get to UNIX till Dallas.......
Posted by Dad at May 3, 2005 02:56 PMYeah, I think it was at Tymshare actually, but it's the same version of the game (350 points).
And yeah, we is all old. :)
Posted by Nicole at May 7, 2005 01:53 PMMaybe the whole 'bring your kids to work' thing will produce a generation of people who will reject pointless meetings outright, as a result of having been bored literally to tears in the boring office environment as children.
I wonder if they do BYKTW Day at the CIA and NSA and such?
Posted by Tino at May 21, 2005 10:36 AM
Well, that would be a net-good, eh?