It's a Five O'Clock World

Checking into the barren wasteland that is my inbox this week, I found this notice for next Thursday’s “Bring Your Child to Work Day”, which apparently exists outside of heartwarming Reader’s Digest fiction.




I’m not sure my company could have come up with a less accurate approximation of what my day actually entails. Assuming that the whole point of “Bring Your Child to Work Day” is to provide a gentle indoctrination into the working world, to show your offspring the value of being a breadwinner and a hard day’s work in the hopes of them following suit, I can understand why they feel the need to blatantly lie to the kids, as the phrase “in accordance with Sarbanes-Oxley” doesn’t have the same merry ring to it as “ride along in the cop car” or “take a tour of the spaceship”, but if your kid honestly believes that you come to work every day to play with Legos, well, I’d rather not have them in the work force anyway. And even if that is the case, doesn’t that make you out to be kind of a dick? Hey kids, each morning, mommy and daddy desert you at school to bury your nose in books and long division while they go off to the office to face paint and watch cartoons.

Since the top employers in the area I grew up in were a correctional facility and a mental institution, they didn’t really encourage “Bring Your Child to Work Day”, but since we were kind of strapped for cash in the early years, I would often find myself tagging along to my father’s jobs, coloring book in tow (he worked in the emergency room of the local hospital by day, and the medical clinic by Thursday-Friday night). Having spent a childhood surrounded by medical textbooks and horror movies, I had no problem with the fact that my dinner was often brought to me by someone covered in blood, and I suspect I’ve acquired antibodies for diseases that would make your local slaughterhouse owner gag, but looking back, I do wonder what it was like to sit in an ER, anxiously waiting for news of your loved one, as a happy little girl munched on peanut butter crackers and asked you if you want to play a word game. As for the clinic, well, not a lot of children are given access to their teachers’ medical charts, and it’s every bit as satisfying as it sounds.

Did you wash your hands before dinner?

Now, having spent an entire lifetime not getting knocked up, and doing a damn good job of it, I don’t see why I’m being punished like this. Not only do I have to sit at my desk and pretend to be impressed by people’s ability to procreate all day—each spawn’s “final, framed masterpiece” equally more impressive than the last, I’m sure—but I have to put in a full day’s work while some chick from Accounting gets to watch a friggin’ magic show because her condom broke in high school. The only thing that’s going to get me through the day (besides drinking heavily at lunch and my 12:30 appointment to “Steal Kids’ Food”) is the hope that someone will have thought it a good idea to bring not one but two rugrats to work, so I’ll get to witness a VP of something bullshit his way through a daylong contest of “Daddy, whose _____ is better?”.