too much free time

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." ~Albert Camus

It is once again the time of year with no major holidays, only a bunch of ridiculous minor/made up ones. Today's festivity is "Bring your [child] to work day", It used to be either bring the boy or bring the girl, not the gender neutral "child" or "son or daughter" but I suppose some whiny little brat complained enough to get it changed and now we have a day at the end of April where children are encouraged to enter the workplace and muck up the gears of progress.

To those folks that have children, this day could be a boon as they would not require the services of a child care provider for the day because their child care provider will be their employer. To those without children, this day is worse than normal. On my morning commute, I was accosted by not one, but two separate rambunctious whipper snappers. The first was an incorrigibly enthusiastic young girl jumping up and down and greeting everyone on the shuttle bus ride from the parking lot. The second was a young boy standing in the middle of the sidewalk that I nearly toppled over into oncoming traffic because he's too short for normal morning sidewalk walking. Yes, this same scenario would have played out if a shorter than average adult were standing in the middle of the sidewalk like an asshole, however it doesn't on most morning because those shorter than average adults apparently don't stand in the middle of the sidewalk munching on chodes staring off into space.

The biggest tragedy of the entire day is that these poor children, dragged through the workday annoying and interrupting progress at every turn, don't even get an accurate portrait of what their parent actually does. The parent probably isn't going to spend their usual half hour sitting in the bathroom tweeting on their phone in the afternoon to avoid working because there's a child that needs cared for waiting at their desk. The usual morning sob-fest the parent goes through when they realize they're in a dead end job and the bills are piling up just won't happen and the verbal berating by the boss and snickers and asides by the co-workers probably won't hit as hard because of the little 3 foot tall buffer they have tagging along beside them.

There's one fact that parents never seem to realize: no one cares about your kids. Did the child invent something useful? Did they do something entertaining [to everyone, not just the parent]? Does the child have anything to contribute to the conversation? Can the child do tricks? If none of these are answered in the affirmative, no one cares about the child except those that are duty bound to care for the child. It's a biological trick the children play on their parents, though these little tykes have literally no redeeming qualities, they've evolved to chemically trick their parents into thinking they are the best things ever. Plenty of children have come and gone and I assure 99.9999% of you out there, your children aren't remarkable, interesting, or useful.

Children have no reason to be in the workplace and the whole notion is clearly something cooked up by working "professionals" that don't have enough work to do, have too much free time on their hands and terrible ideas. Take your child home.