This article may only be reproduced in its entirety, including
resource box and subscription information electronically or in print. A courtesy copy of publication would be nice, too!This Was Not Addressed In The Workplace... By Dan Reinhold
So you're working at home now! No more of those annoying workplace issues that have filled several volumes of professional journals. They're all behind you, a faint, unpleasant memory. Of course, working at home has no such...challenges?
No one looks over your shoulder. No one monitors your output from afar. ( I was looking for way out of that website...really!!) No warnings or veiled threats about too much time at water cooler. BUT...
There is one issue, one factor, one paradigm, one contingency, one concern never addressed, nay, not present in that organizational outhouse.
Its destructive influence has been well recorded, yet they continue to be commonplace. They are not found in corporate world because of dangers inherent in their continued presence. Volatile, unpredictable and thoroughly incomprehensible, they are greatest challenge of working in your home and they're always there!!
Among many names bestowed upon them (some less than complimentary) throughout recorded time, they are known to us as...children.
Of all horrors imaginable, they are worst because their minds hold only one thought: You're home.
What project, with looming deadline, impossible demands and voracious time-consuming appetite, ever frustrated your best efforts more than a five-year-old opening your door punctually every four and one quarter minutes to announce, "I wanna _________?"
Do you ever recall conversations of this kind during a performance review?
"Milquetoast, we are in agreement, then, then your primary goal for next quarter is to successfully address concern of little Jennie's incessant attention-getting behavior as well as Montague's single-handed defacement or demolition of several pieces of valuable furnishings and pets?"
As I sat writing today, I was visited by my youngest son, Nicholas. He is three years old and will turn fifteen in June. Having left my door ajar while he played in next room (" And about your child emergency reaction time, Milquetoast..."), he appeared beside me with an air of quiet resolve that would have made Churchill shudder, several books held tightly in his arms.
