Kids at work

I had to go back to work at 8:30 PM tonight. We had some contractors come in to town that needed to use our network to access a machine in China. Normally the policy is that anyone who doesn’t work there or hasn’t filled out an NDA cannot come in the building. I changed (or violated, if you’re of the “glass is half-empty” club) that policy tonight and brought in my kids. Screw them if I have to come in at 8:30 PM on a Friday night. No one else could do it, and we are not talking about rocket science here either. So, if they are not willing to put in the up front investment to do this stuff right, that means I bring in my kids.

It went fairly well and the excitement of “Dad breaking the rules” quickly wore off to “don’t you have any games on your computer?” This was said front of my semi-boss of course. I have multiple levels of bosses but this guy was, up until recently, my real boss for the last two years. I laughed it off and then hooked them up with the YETI games.

I get to take them to work for a couple hours every year in April for the “Bring your kids to work day”. It ranks right up there with birthdays and Halloween; the kids really look forward to it. The excitement wore off in about a half-hour because Dad actually had to work. In April we just screw around for several hours. My son actually thought that they handed out donuts and gift bags everyday in the cafeteria and wondered why I didn’t bring them home for him on a regular basis...

I bribed them with candy and coke and that of course only wound them up more, duh. My cubicle buddy has tons of bubble wrap and that occupied them a little, but then the noise began to interfere with our conference call. I was able to pull them out of there after about 2 hours and I think we even accomplished what we needed to.

I think they got their first taste of the fact that “work” is not as fun as it seems.

Fej.