Work is the place where you do *work*

Unless you work where I work. Then work may be where you spend most of the day with another co-worker creating a scrapbook for a relative. It was bad enough last week and yesterday when nearly everybody was working on scrapbook pages for a retiring co-worker. That's at least sort of, kind of, work-related. But building an entire scrapbook for a relative? How is that related to work? Can I bring in my knitting next week because I'm trying to meet a deadline? It's for charity, not a relative, but homeless kids are a worthy cause, right? (Oh, and I got the "Gee, you're not talking much today." comment again today. I bit my tongue and did not say "Well, I do have work to do, don't you?")

Yes, indeedy. This is your tax dollars at work. And people wonder why government workers have such a bad reputation....

I do sometimes wonder if my co-workers will ever make the connection between not having enough time to get their work done and spending a lot of time goofing off. In the meantime, I will continue to work hard because that's what I do. It may be that nobody will ever notice the work getting done, but at least I have the satisfaction of doing the job right and doing it well.

More from the overheard conversation department:
If you pay all the bills for your child (rent, utilities, tuition, car expenses, etc) until they're in their mid-twenties and about to get married, do you really expect that child to ever learn how to be independent or to develop good judgment about financial matters? Aren't you instead fostering complete dependence? This might explain why said child's parental unit had to go to their job interview with them (that's what the parent said, at least). I can only hope that the parental unit didn't sit in on the interview. I'm hoping a college graduate isn't so completely inept and helpless that they can't manage a job interview on their own. I know I wouldn't be all that impressed with a job candidate if their Mommy or Daddy had to come with them. Wouldn't you want your offspring to become independent at some point? What sort of life can you have when someone does everything for you?

Another question: If you do run your child's life their entire life, you might not want to get all crabby about them making the "wrong" decision on occasion. Heck, even if you don't run your child's life the whole time, you might not want to do that. How did you learn that something else was the "right" answer? By trying it and by occasionally screwing up. I'm willing to bet that the parents screwed things up. Everybody screws things up. It's how we learn. Doing everything for me does not teach me the "right" answers. It teaches me to be dependent and helpless. Furthermore, the answer which was "right" for you and your life may not actually work for me and my life, just as what works for me may not work for you. Perhaps I'm just weird because I think parents should want to create independent and self-reliant kids. After all, the parents aren't going to be around said kid 24/7 for the entire duration of the kid's life. Sooner or later the kid will have to make a decision on their own. You might as well give them the tools to be able to make good choices.

Is it just me or is the Burger King king guy really creepy?
He's clearly related to the Oompa Loompas from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He sure doesn't make me want to eat at Burger King. Even if one of their burgers wasn't apparently going to cause me to sprout facial hair. (Well, that's what happens to everybody in the commercial who eats that burger.) Perhaps Burger King owns stock in companies selling razors, shaving cream or other depilatory products. In any event, the ad campaign really kills my appetite for burgers, if you must know.

Sunflowers!
The garden is now blooming. I'm still taller than most of the sunflowers though. For now.

My co-workers are absolutely amazed that I've been growing vegetables. You'd think I was an alchemist. I've tried to explain that zucchini and most other veggies are easy to grow. You simply plant them, weed them once or twice a season and water them once a week if needed. They're convinced that growing veggies must be amazingly difficult. I guess they've never tried it themselves. *shrugs*

Comments

Stefaneener said…
Either you work with unusually moronic people or something. I get lots of "I can't believe you can do that!" about 95% of the stuff I take completely for granted. You'd think that the human race would have died out if most people are to be believed.

Sheesh. And scrapbooking is perhaps the devil's work.
Twitchh said…
(And yes, the BK King dude is just *creepy*. I had a very immediate, visceral shudder run up my spine the first time I saw him, and wondered what the *h4* BK thought they were doing with him.)

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