Baby's day out.

One of the most exciting thing that keeps me glued to my job is that there is always something new happening in the office. New Year raffles, Christmas parties, Diwali Pooja in the Indian style, Hamukkah, the Chinese New Year, charity programs, the French Bastille day and each month has its own exclusive agenda to look forward to.

Another initiative taken by the top bosses was the "Bring your children to work" day since most collegues have children and there schools had closed for summer break. The idea was to inculcate a sense of respect and belongingness among the children and also to let the parents spend some more "quality time" with the parents. Good intention but bad out come.

Here is how it all started......... my workplace has a majority of women staff (much to the envy of men) and mostly married working mothers with children aging from 3 month old babies to 17 year old teenagers. The youngest ones did not stop howling in an attempt to adjust with the new envoironment that they were thrown into, the kindergarten students were busy trying to prove the fact that their mothers were the most loving mothers or that their dads were stronger than Spiderman. The 10 year olds were looked as they had just landed from the outer planet and had endless questions begining and ending with "what, when, why and how".

And then there were the most curious of them all - the 13-15 year olds who could neither be classified as kids because they were'nt and neither were they the big enough to talk global warming and new playstation about. This lot somehow came well prepared with a whole bag ful of Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys and Enid Blytons, since there was no escape.

Finally there were three 17 year olds who had that confident look of being "almost there", the most annoyed of the lot. They spoke of new things and new issues and in each sentence tried to convince me that they knew a lot more on every topic including a software that I had been using since long. They seemed to be in a hurry to grow up and were facsinated by every object around that had anything to do remotely related to physics and it made some kind of a noise, which includes the paper shredder.

Eight and a half hours later with a day full of babies screaming, children pulling my stole to grab my attnetion and losing all my stationary to the little "angels", when every parent leaves with the apple of their eyes, some single and young people liek me are left behind and forced to volunteer to clean up, clean up all the baby food that the little monsters threw up when the mothers were forcing it into their mouths somewhere in the middle of trying to finish an assessment report, clean up the crayon and colour stains that the budding painters and artists left behind on the carpets and walls. Arrange all the books and maps on the shelves, throw away all the paper craft works which the 10-13 year old army had left behind in their quest to know and learn more and try to arrange all the furniture which was ransacked by the still older generation. The elder ones in order to prove their extensive and newly acquired knowledge about MS and the world on their fingertips with the internet had left 2 systems with viruses downloaded straight from the internet and 3 broken mouses, I was forced to change my perception about "quality time".