You may think it’s a distraction to have your child at work. The bosses will think it hurts the bottom line, that the corporate structure is unable to compute for non-productive workers under four feet tall. The accountants will frown at the idea of an unpaid and unproductive person sharing space with an employee. Co-workers will be annoyed and distracted having someone talking about ponies and castle forts. The office manager will not want to see post-it notes used to make a bed of grass for a paper doll, tape used to hang up unicorns, and coffee stirrers made into a bird nest. The working place is no place for a child, a rambunctious pest who cares nothing for productivity and quiet and uses office supplies to make a rainbow unicorn.
But this is wrong. My daughter came to work with me in the days before Thanksgiving and never have I been so productive and happy at my job. She reminded me why I am working, she interspersed joy and play in a workplace that sorely needs it. Sometimes she was engrossed in making artwork, other times she needed a little motivation in the form of hot chocolate. But she was the best workmate I’ve ever had and I understand how bringing a child to work, much as bringing companion animals into a senior living facility, brightens everyone’s day. Even walking to a pizza place for lunch we didn’t march down the sidewalk like worker drones but stopped at every potted flower looking for stray flowers to contribute to a fairy house built in my cubicle. There is a place for children at the office and no tally sheet or timecard can record the value to morale to spend time with a girl like this.
Writer, architect, father, husband.
Awwwwwwww 🙂 Love that pic.