Random Shit!

bellview--muchos besos   

Home | Movie Reviews | Video Roundups | Essays | Game Reviews | Subscribe | Mailbag | About | Search

Family Day

10/31/04

For Halloween, management decided that the company should host a Halloween family day, as a chance to have an office party but also as a way for those with kids to bring the whole gang in to celebrate this holiday with co-workers and loved ones.

I believe that while working at Freddie Mac, my old employer used to call this day "Bring the Kids to Work Day."  I remember this because then--as I don't now--I didn't have any kids, so I came to work one of those days with my pockets pulled out, to show that I was empty-handed when it came to having pint-sized attachments in my life at the time.

For the family day we just had at my company, COMSYS, management set up a pretty solid schedule...IF you have kids.  There would be food served at this get-together, including cupcakes, candy corn and...chicken wings.  After about 20 minutes, we switched activities to kids getting their pictures taken with their parents.  After this, we had general child frolicking in the main board room at our offices, then a face-painting session, then a costume kiddie parade, where the kids were literally walked around our office in costume while the adults cheered and ultimately voted on the best kiddie costume of the afternoon.

One of my directors, Kate, came over to my cube the day before the party.  She was recruiting for the party when she led with

K:  "Hey, Justin, how are you?"
J:  "Fine, Kate, you?"
K:  "Good, thanks.  Listen, we need someone to man the face painting station, and since you don't have any kids I thought--"
J:  "Thanks for the offer...I just think you'd be better off with someone that is, well, more suited for spending time with the kids than me.  Sorry!"

I could tell that Kate knew she was going to get a negative from me by the way she had already started backing out of my cube when she asked how I was doing.  She ended up finding two girls in the office (also unattached like myself) to do the face painting and to run the kiddie parade.  And, I can't really fault Kate for asking me to do the face painting station in the first place--she's right, I don't have any kids.

But, I always wonder if those with kids even care about what those that DON'T have kids think about these family days.  I would assume that they think everyone just loves kids, which is a dangerous thing, since many people I know are opposed to ever raising kids of their own.  In general, I think everyone tolerates kids, which is a significant difference from loving kids; people express happiness about the fact that you might have kids, but sometimes they want to be as far away from your kids as humanly possible.

I love kids.  I am hopeful that one day, I will have the chance to raise a couple of my own.  However, I can't think of anything worse than bringing my future children into the office to raise hell and make the entire work day unproductive for those around me, especially those that can't stand the sound of little Bobby and little Sally arguing over...well, just about anything.

After leaving the party at 3 PM, I went back to my desk to make a bunch of calls to candidates so that I wouldn't have to stay late that day.  What a fucking mistake that was.

"Hi, this is Justin Bell here at COMSYS, how are you?  Good.  I shot you an e-mail earlier today about a developer position in Reston and--"

[on opposite side of my cube wall, loudly]: "PaaaaaUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLL!  Give it back to me!  GIVE IT BACK TO MEEEEEEEEEE!!!!"

"--I'm sorry, Jin, say that again?  No, sorry...no, I didn't hear that.  I'm sorry.  Hold on just one second, okay?"

I put Jin on hold.  I didn't really know how to address the kids in the next cube, so I went with something safe.  "Kids?  Would you mind quieting down, please?  I'm conducting a business call."

This obviously did not work.  I picked Jin off of hold.  "Sorry about that; I had to pull up your resume and our database is usually slower in the afternoon.  Okay, so the position is a senior Java developer with--"

[on opposite side of my cube wall, banshee-like]:  "I WANT TO PLAY WITH THE PHONE!  GIMME THAT!!"  [sounds of wrangling with a telephone handset, banging off of the particle board desks]

"--Fannie Mae...did you get that e-mail?  Oh, you said you did?  Sorry, I...I'm sorry, Jin, I didn't hear that.  Anyway, it's a six-month contract, and we should be able to match the salary you were looking for per your Monster.com profile; are you still looking for $80K?"

[on opposite side of my cube wall, deafening]:  "PAUL?  KATIE?  WHAT ARE YOU DOING?  THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE TRYING TO WORK!  GO SIT OVER IN THAT OFFICE AND QUIET DOWN!!!"

"Wow, Jin, I'm sorry, can I put you on hold for a minute?"  I got up and walked around to the cube next to mine.  There was Jane, the mother of these two vagrants, looking haggard.  She apologized for her kids' behavior, and she said that they would be quiet for the rest of the afternoon since they were going to play in an empty office.  This, of course, was a lie, since about 30 minutes after this conversation the kids were back in Jane's cube to torment my every phone call.

[A side note.  Without sounding too insensitive, I propose a new law--if you have four or more children, you should BY LAW have to have one parent stay at home until all of the kids are at least 12 years old.  This woman Jane that sits on the other side of my cube wall has five children, and she recently re-entered the work force even though three of these kids are under age 8.  If she wants to work in my office, cool, but that means Dad should be staying at home.  I'm sorry, but having five kids means that one of you already HAS a job--watching over your five rugrats and making sure that all of them have a parental resource available at all times.  Seriously, Jane makes and receives--no fucking lie--about 20 calls a DAY from her kids or their respective temporary owners, like teachers, coaches, babysitters or other parents that are watching her kids.  I don't know how she gets anything done, and by the time you read this, it's possible that management will have figured that out, too, since no single human being can be productive in an eight-hour day by taking that many non-work-related calls per workday.  Roughly twice a week, I almost want to walk over to her cube and say, "Woman, what are you doing?"  And no, they don't have a nanny, and no, they don't have a maid; she mentioned all of these things during a lunch we had a couple of weeks ago.  WTF??]

I spent the rest of my work day being fairly unproductive; my concentration was almost entirely spoiled by my anger, as kids were literally having a track meet in the aisle next to my cubicle; one kid took a dive so hard that he got rug burn from the crash and that naturally sent him into screams heard as far away as Florida from my Rockville-based office.  In another unfortunate moment, a salesman that sits near me and his wife had a shouting match over who would be watching their child for the upcoming Saturday night...it seemed that the salesman had made "guys night out" plans with some buddies and the wife had made "ladies night" plans as well.  Didn't matter to me, because all it meant was that their child had to witness all of that without a filter.

Around 4 PM, my mind started to fade as I wondered if I had the strength to make it all happen, to raise kids at all.  One of my other directors, Peter, came up to me at one point and--reading my mind like an open book--said something along the lines of "You look like you're having a great time, Justin!"  The sarcasm was right on; it was weird, but for one afternoon, I was pretty sure I didn't want to have kids at all, and I had never felt that way before.  Thank God that Family Day is only one day a year...otherwise, I think this feeling might last forever!

 

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell and Longer Community Trust:

• "Free-Free":  Opening Weekend

• Making your permanent residence Miami Beach:  $9.50 Show

• License plate--SAY HO:  Matinee

• Settling down:  Rental

• Being a Redskins fan:  Hard Vice

 

justin@bellviewmovies.com