Showing posts with label Crossing Boundaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crossing Boundaries. Show all posts

April 28, 2016

Take Your Family Issues To Work Day

So we all love Take You Child(ren) To Work Day.

It's a great idea to bond with our children and share our work life with them.

This way they know what mommy and daddy do and also a little of what work is like. 

But one of the funny things I noticed is how uncomfortable most parents seem with their kids around them in at work. 

They have this worried and kvetchy look on their face.

They are crossing boundaries between personal/family/home life and professional/work life. 

What is at once two-faces, two distinct roles is now combined for a single day a year. 

Perhaps personal problems from home and between family members is entering the workspace or the problems of work life is evident to your close family members. 

Maybe mommy or daddy really doesn't get along all the well with little Johnny or Rosie all the time or perhaps little Johnny or Rosie is not that perfect little kid you've been showing around in pictures and talking up in the office. 

Similarly, mommy or daddy may not be "all that" in the office that they come home and portray to their family about--that big management position and corner office could be just another run of the mill job and situated in a long row of cubicles deep this way and that. 

In any case, the barriers are being crossed and even if there have been no outright lies told and caught, different sides of the person that are typically kept separate and sacrosanct are converging and the alternate egos and varied personas come head-to-head.

The good news is that the organization usually gives the parents leeway to not really do any serious work when the kids are around for the day and to mostly schlep them to special kids' events in the workplace--everybody get to meet the CEO and have ice cream?

Thus, the unveiling of dual natures and embedded conflicts is kept to a manageable minimum, if not an uncomfortable merging of work and family life. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal) 
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