GAWD People STOP Bringing Your Kids To The Office When They Have A Day Off

[matcom]

:eyes:

your kids have the day off because its a Jewish holiday. so what? DON'T bring them to WORK!

i don't need little Sally drawing me fucking PICTURES to hang on my wall! i have WORK to do! and your little kid can't draw worth shit anyway!

fuck i'd rather have a Kinkade! :grr:

:eyes:

:popcorn:

[billyskank]

1. I find it really wierd that people do that

In Britain, the only time people bring their kids in to work is when a woman goes off on maternity leave. It seems to be traditional to pop in while on leave with your newborn to show your spawn to all your workmates. I can just about handle that!

[tjwmason]

36. I like that one.

I can spend hours playing with very young sproglets.

But bringing in older children - especially for longer periods? That just sounds nuts to me.

[xmas74]

2. what if my kid brings cookies and beer?

She loves to share her cookies and Mommy's beer. She'd also tell you about how she wishes John Kerry was president and ask you if you'll let her play "bad" video games.
Oh-she also likes to give people all of her change.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

5. I'll PM you where I work. Send her on over.

:evilgrin:

[xmas74]

9. She'll join you.

She prefers it when I make her homemade chocolate chip. And I have some Sam Adams in the fridge.
She also wants to play any video game I've banned in this house. Think violence and nudity and she'll want to take a look at it.

[northzax]

3. would you rather have them at home

practicing their topiary?

[LynneSin]

4. Sign me up for that team!!! I agree 110%

At least our company provides emergency daycare for days like today where the kids are off school but you aren't. But even still we have kids come into work and they're just annoying as hell because lets face it - THEY'RE BORED!!!!!!!

[matcom]

7. a parent should be FORCED to take a vacation or sick day

rather than bring in the 'tike' :eyes:

[underpants]

6. Oy vey, what's with the anger so much?

:bounce:

I was about to ask what a "Kinkade" was then I remembered.

[matcom]

8. little sally got cracker crumbs on my chair

when i went to the copy machine :grr:

[jobycom]

18. Ah, the cracker crumbs clashed with the beer stains?

:-)

[underpants]

38. Stick them in the kid's ear

No seriously do it. That little bugger will be screaming .... no hold it I have a better idea-got any eye drops around? Drop some in the little ****ers juice box.....he'll be shitting for days.

[Midlodemocrat]

10. Quit yer kvetchin'.

My kids are perfect.

[matcom]

12. well, if we are talking about your teenage daughter...

then i concur :D

[Midlodemocrat]

20. LOL.

:*

[DS1]

11. I pity you

Obviously there's something seriously going on with you that you're not talking about.

Poor, poor miserable mean matcom

[Midlodemocrat]

14. I, too, feel sorry for matcom.

He is seething with rage against children, dogs, and the poor sweet gesture you attempted to bestow on him yesterday.

He's obviously very troubled.

[DS1]

16. Next thing you know he'll be posting threats towards his own dog

:scared:

:hug:

[matcom]

15. i shot your pitbull today while you were at work

thought you should know.

but i DO feel better now

[DS1]

19. Only once?

I'll bet he's really pissed

[matcom]

21. yeah

then i let him loose in a playground

[DS1]

22. Well how's he supposed to mend without a good source of protein?

and zippers

[matcom]

25. i'm an animal lover

it was the least i could do

[Midlodemocrat]

23. Why didn't you just bring him to your office and sic him on Sally?

[DS1]

24. Cube Matches are illegal in Massachussetts

Goddamn librul Gubmit

[matcom]

26. i blame Romney

:grr:

[jobycom]

13. I love seeing kids in the office. Makes me feel like the boss is a human

instead of a kid-hating mean ole baddie.

[-..__...]

17. What, your workplace doesn't have a steel cage or pen...

to corral the critters in?

[jmm]

27. I had to stop going to one dentist afer she did that.

I understand child care in this country can suck for many people but the last thing I want when I am drugged and unable to talk is for you and your assistant to decide you have to pin my body under you so I can't move then for you to let your five years old sit on my leg and start screaming, "Mommy, mommy let me try," as your mangle your way through putting sealants on my wisdom teeth." Ok so I'll admit I kicked him but I was aiming for her. That was the only way I could get them to get off me and take that stuff out of my mouth so I could tell them I was never coming back there.

added on edit
I use to work in a toy store and one of the managers thought it was a playground for her sons until one day when I gave one of them the most politically correct US history lessons imaginable and about half an hour later another one broke his nose trying to dive onto a beach ball.

[Patiod]

28. Ha! My previous employer brought her kids in EVERY DAY

One day she popped her head in my office and said "Danielle, honey, don't play with Pattie. Pattie has work to do today for Mommy."

She owned the company, though, so she could do what she wanted.

[ohiosmith]

29. Let's make a deal: I won't sit on park benches next to playgrounds

if you don't bring your offspring to the office.

[no name no slogan]

30. Psssst... not everybody loves your freaking kids

That is also one of my pet peeves.

I don't go disrupt your child's classroom on my days off. And I don't want your kid in my office on her/his days off, no matter how cute you think s/he is.

Not everybody loves kids. Just like how not everybody loves cats. If you're kids are disrupting my work environment, leave them at home.

[Midlodemocrat]

31. Don't be ridiculous! Everyone loves my kids.

:P

[-..__...]

32. Just give them some printer toner or a letter opener to play with.

That should keep them amused and out of your hair for a little while.

[DS1]

33. printer toner and a letter opener - time for some office tattoos

:bounce:

[no name no slogan]

43. ...

:spray:

"Hey mom, how do you spell 'eat me'?"

[youthere]

46. Don't be silly...

EVERYBODY loves cats...this means you.:mad:
LOL

[johnnie]

34. Yeah..no shit

They should put them back in the womb on the days they have no school.

[Angry Girl]

35. Thank you!!!! I am SO TIRED of this child-centric society!

I'm pro-choice for a reason, dammit!

[Pithlet]

37. Yeah, the child centric society

that leaves millions of them in poverty, guts their schools, and won't even provide for their care so their parents can work. THAT child-centric society.

That's why I hate these threads. I agree with the OP and think bringing kids to work if you can help it is a bad idea. But all these threads do is bring out the ugly.

[Angry Girl]

55. This society also does not protect the elderly or disabled....

But I see your point. However, it IS a child-centric society in the sense that the media and other influenses are constantly pushing having kids. What's up with that????

HOW many children, in the U.S. alone, have NO parents? Why have kids when you can adopt?

Why do so many couples resort to spending tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes paid for by health insurance no less, for in vitro treatments (and many of these women are not healthy and their bodies are clearly telling them not to go through with child birth)?

Why are all the TV shows only too happy to show families with 4 or 6 or more kids? How much did that little brood cost the family? How much did it cost me, a childless taxpayer?

Why is contraception frowned upon? I NEVER see it on TV or in the movies. And I won't tell you what I really think of the dumb-as-rocks abstinence-only people....

Why is everything geared toward protecting the children? Can't cuss, can't show a naked person on TV (but violence is ok), can't buy anything without some expensive child safety feature stuck onto it.... Whatever happened to PARENTS? (oh, yeah, right, they're too busy holding down four jobs in order to pay for these fabulous kids they had)

Oh, and there's the wonderful public education they offer (NOT!)

Whoa.... Sorry about the rant.

But you're right, we encourage people in this society to breed but we offer them no support to raise these offspring. You'd almost think it was on purpose: to trap parents in a corporate system where they're forced to stay with some crap job with benefits just for the kids. Or there's the military....

[Pithlet]

63. Probably a semantics issue, but I don't think

that the media glorifying having children really makes it a child-centric society. Irritating, yes. You're spot on otherwise. The only other point I'd argue is that having kids costs you as a taxpayer, but only because taxes are a cost of having a functioning (albeit functioning crappily) society. Children are as deserving of those benefits as anyone else, and I don't begrudge the taxes spent on them anymore than I do anyone else, and never have even before I had kids.

[Angry Girl]

67. You know, I never minded the taxes bit until....

I moved to Arizona and I see these dirt-stupid, uneducated, misogynistic Mormons popping out kids like it's a contest to save the planet (I think it is, in their deluded world). Aside from the powerful Mormons who control a lot of the politics here, the rest of them are regular or below-average wage earners. And their churches are among the richest in the world....

Why do I have to support these religious zealots? I wouldn't mind so much if the Mormons supported MY pet projects, but they don't, not a single damn one! The bastards! And they killed Kenny! :-o

[Pithlet]

68. LOL

Just console yourself with the knowledge that not all of their kids will turn out to be just like them. Some do escape :)

[Shell Beau]

39. Oh, Bah Humbug!!!

:P

[grace0418]

40. I feel your pain. However, at my office people aren't given enough

time off to cover all the random days off that kids get from school. My friend, a single mom with no family around, doesn't know what she's going to do this year because her daughter is out of pre-school and her new school has many more days off. If my friend takes any more days off this year, they'll be unpaid. Hardly a great solution for a single mom. I'd rather have my friend here with her daughter, helping out with the workload, than at home not helping at all (and not getting paid).

[miss_kitty]

41. We'll send them to your house

to work on your trees!

:7

[strategery blunder]

42. Well, this is what happens when parents can't afford childcare

Would you rather have a 7-yr old left at home for 9 hours (including commute)? Would you rather have said 7-yr old "find" some poisonous substance in the house, ingest it and die, all because the parent could not otherwise afford proper supervision for his/her kid?

I understand that not everyone likes kids, hell, I think they can be more annoying than Faux New$ sometimes too. But some parents don't have any other option unless they want to risk the above.

[Blue-Jay]

44. Haha! Matcom said that he's got WORK to do!

:rofl:

[Zomby Woof]

45. Yep*

* - satirical, over-the-top reply deleted, because I understand how these things CAN be taken hard even when that was not my intention. :D

[Pithlet]

48. Maybe it's time to actually make it easier for parents to work

instead of having to worry about bringing their kids in to annoy their coworkers or losing their job.

Child labor is no joke, ZW. Most of us in this country still reap the benefits of it, even if we no longer do it in this country. Most people today are walking around right now wearing clothes made by child labor and aren't even aware of it or refuse to think about it. People don't see it, so people don't care. We can look at our own past and think "We've come so far" and be completely ignorant.

You know. Call me humorless. But I'm tired of parents being portrayed as self centered boobs around here. Self centered people abound, and many happen to have children. There is no doubt that there are parents who think the world should revolve around their little darlings. But they were probably morons before they had kids. Most working parents I've known have it pretty tough. What do you do if your kid gets sick yet again, or your child care giver is off for the day, and you have no more personal days left. More companies are implementing zero tolerance policies against absences, and some are even firing people for going to funerals. It's not always smart to choose to take your kids to work, but sometimes it's hard to know what to do. I thank my lucky stars every day that I don't have to deal with this. It's time we started pointing the finger of blame where it belongs. I know this is the lounge, but geeze.

[Zomby Woof]

52. I go around naked

COMPLETELY eliminates the whole child labor/guilt factor. Once you go out in public naked often enough, the whole embarrassment factor wears off. Can be problematic when drinking hot coffee, however...

I think BOTH arguments have merit: There IS a severe lack of child care in this country, a lack of child nutrition programs, child vaccinations, child education, and on and on. I agree with you on those points.

AND there are also a visible (not necessarily a large number, but visible and present, nonetheless) cohort of parents who DO have the resources to get their children cared for during work hours who CHOOSE to bring little Brittany and Bethany to the workplace to show them off. They do not raise their children to be considerate (I am talking grade schoolers, not toddlers or infants) of others. Inconsiderate parents produce inconsiderate children, generally. Exceptions abound.

I think the parents who NEED to the resources listed above are the ones NOT bringing them to work and fobbing them off on the rest of us. They are home, risking their jobs over their attendance record, and that is a shame. I think the ire in this thread (or the impetus behind my dark humor) is a CLASS issue. We resent yuppie parents who insist on pushing their spawn in our faces.

Just remember, whatever is said about parents on DU is a generalization about a minority percentage of evil assholes OUT THERE somewhere, and should never be taken personally by ANY of you. :-)

[Pithlet]

53. I just haven't encountered that too many times.

The handful of times I ever encounterd co-workers children were when they were desparate and while they were there they were conscious of not letting them bother me or anyone else, and they were scared the boss was writing them up for it. And I've worked all kinds of jobs all over the country. Not saying that it never happens, just that I don't believe it is an epidemic.

It's not that I take it personally (or not just, anyway), because I'm completely aware that I'm not one of those ;) it's that I tend to hate those kinds of generalizations. I do honestly think it is overblown by many here. I guess I've just always lived in an alternate universe, because the times I've been inconvenienced by other people's kids is vastly outnumbered by inconsiderate acts by adults in general. I really don't think this kind of generalization would be tolerated if we were talking about most other groups of people. And I'm a champion for the underdog, what can I say :)

And I apologize for insinuating that you didn't care about child labor. After I posted it I realized that's how it looked. It's just a hotbutton issue for me. Children are treated like the dregs of the earth and bare the brunt of societie's ills worldwide, and I'm very touchy on that subject.

[Zomby Woof]

54. In the real world

As opposed to this strange DU world where irony and sarcasm are common currency... I couldn't fathom advocating any such horror.

I have a nephew who is 4 1/2, and a grandson who is 1 1/2 (see Nini's avatar), and we worry enough about what kind of world these kids are growing up into.

In the workplaces I have been in, it wasn't epidemic. I liked it when people brought in their babies. Anything to break up the drudgery of the cube farm is okay by me. The key is to have a humane policy of allowing people to look after their kids without penalty.

I think it depends on the kind of workplace - and perceptions in general. I am always looking for ways to stick it to people who lord their advantages over the working folks over the rest of us. :D

[Pithlet]

56. I know that.

I know that you wouldn't.

And now I'll put myself back in DU Lounge humor mode and laugh at this thread and tell Matcom to get back to work. :)

[Zomby Woof]

57. I edited my original post

Just because I don't think the next person who reads it will be as understanding as you. :D

[Pithlet]

59. Just see that you don't do it again

Mister. :we need a finger wagging smilie: :evilgrin:

[yvr girl]

60. My ex-boss's wife brought their 3 monsters in ALL the time

They ran around screaming and were generally disruptive. There was no reason for them to be there.

[Pithlet]

61. I certainly wouldn't argue that.

I'd only argue that that example isn't proof of the general dunderheadeness of parents.

[yvr girl]

64. I think another poster made a valid point

Considerate parents tend to have considerate children. Inconsiderate parents tend to have inconsiderate children.

I have a part time job that puts me in contact with many parents and their children. Some parents put a lot of effort into making sure their kids say thank you, and are generally polite. Others, not so much. I can't believe what some kids get away with with their parents watching. My parents wouldn't have tolerated that kind of behaviour from me.

I don't expect perfect behavior from children. Sometimes they're too excited to remember the niceties or too tired etc. What I do expect is that parents gently correct them - that's how kids learn. There are plenty of great parents out there, but there are also plenty of poor ones. I expect that many poor parents grew up with poor parents themselves.

[Pithlet]

66. I agree.

But there's an awful lot of *kids are spawn parents are dumb the world is overrun with them* crap in the lounge, too. And not a lot of understanding of how tough it can be, and that most of the time when people take their kids to work they are desperate, and they are worried about their jobs. It's very uncomfortable for most to be aware that their kids are bothering others. A vast majority of parents feel this way. People just remember the one or two numbskulls they encounter and forget the rest. I honestly don't think there is an epedemic of bad parents swooping down on society and making life hell for the rest of us. I think some of the complaints are self centered whining. A lot of it is the myth that parents are horrible these days and not as good as they used to be. A lot of it sounds down right like James Dobsonesque hatred. People tell me not to take it personally, and I probably shouldn't. It's still irritating.

[SarahB]

47. My ex-husband will bring the kids to work.

He's the boss though, so they have to suck up to the kids. However, he only brings the ones he can put to work (the 10 year old and 13 year old- he says they're better than his secretary) and they don't draw the goofy stick pictures any longer. The baby (who's 4), he won't bring in. I work with really sick people 3rd shift. Err... my kids never come in. :shrug:

Depends on the situation. Depends on the kids.

[sakabatou]

49. When I go to mom's offcie when she has a day off...

all I do is filing.

[madinmaryland]

50. you can't be working that hard!

You're still hanging out on DU, in the Lounge!

:evilgrin:

[matcom]

51. it was this morning

i'm home now.

THE RED SOX PLAY AT 4:00 PM!! :bounce:

[TrogL]

58. They put them to work

When I bring my kids to the office, they're immediately grabbed and set to work doing stuff.

Somehow I think that reflects on the quality of work around here.

[CanuckAmok]

62. Make the most of it, like Maddox does:

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=irule

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=irule2

"Vrrrroooooooooooommmmmm! F"

[SOteric]

65. Why would you want a Kinkade?

Aren't you Kinky enough without them?