Kiddo has started working at my night job with me last week and it was especially interesting because she was actually transferred to work with me at the Bistrot over a long weekend. The experience was amazing. The kid who was the cause of a few embarrassing phone calls because of her inability to make it to school on time, suddenly became the epitome of punctuality, dragging me out of the house so that we’d get to work on time. I was suddenly brought back to the seven-year-old who once showed me her watch rather impatiently as I muddled my way in getting her to one of her earliest schools.
Much to the annoyance of her new colleagues, she refused to get involved in idle chit-chat and instead of leaving the cups for the next day, she made it a point of ensuring that every cup was washed before we went home. She was very matter of fact about it – “I am here to do a job and I will finish the job,” she told me.
It wasn’t just me being in Proud Papa Land. The restaurant owner in our nightly drink’s session was quite open about his appreciation of her new work attitude (she had an earlier working stint, which didn’t go too well).
Watching your child take on challenges with guts and determination is an amazing experience. Parenthood is generally an exercise in worrying. You worry about every little thing that the little tyke gets up to and that worry generally grows when the little thing becomes a little less little and every screw up the kid makes gives you a feeling that you must have been a really awful human being for god to give you a screw up. So, when the kid actually shows you that he or she is taking charge of his or her life, you get this amazing sense that you didn’t mess up along the line.
However, while her “new” attitude to work attitude was refreshing, I got a huge jolt of pride when she told me that one of her new sisters had tried to corrupt her by telling her that she could leave work at 9.30 but she should sign out at 10.00 and claim an extra half hours’ worth of wages. She said to me, “She’s nice but keeps trying to get me to do bad things – I’m not going to let her have power over me and it’s wrong – I want to make money but I will do it the correct way.”
I think of this because we do live in an age where you often end up doing the “practical” thing instead of the “right” thing. It’s especially true when it comes to money, where most of us find that we our wages are stagnating or even declining but costs are increasing. The temptation to take short cuts always seems so appealing.
However, there is a maxim in life that says “there is no such thing as a free lunch,” and we often forget that there is a reaction for every action that we take. When something sounds easy, there’s probably a trade off somewhere. If someone encourages you take “easy” money, they’re probably after something else. I go back to the saying – “If it’s too good to be true – it probably is.”
Kiddo proved she has the streets smarts to recognize a scam and an inducement. I’m happy she has a sense of ethics. She’s taken a tremendous load of my shoulders for these two facts alone.
Much to the annoyance of her new colleagues, she refused to get involved in idle chit-chat and instead of leaving the cups for the next day, she made it a point of ensuring that every cup was washed before we went home. She was very matter of fact about it – “I am here to do a job and I will finish the job,” she told me.
It wasn’t just me being in Proud Papa Land. The restaurant owner in our nightly drink’s session was quite open about his appreciation of her new work attitude (she had an earlier working stint, which didn’t go too well).
Watching your child take on challenges with guts and determination is an amazing experience. Parenthood is generally an exercise in worrying. You worry about every little thing that the little tyke gets up to and that worry generally grows when the little thing becomes a little less little and every screw up the kid makes gives you a feeling that you must have been a really awful human being for god to give you a screw up. So, when the kid actually shows you that he or she is taking charge of his or her life, you get this amazing sense that you didn’t mess up along the line.
However, while her “new” attitude to work attitude was refreshing, I got a huge jolt of pride when she told me that one of her new sisters had tried to corrupt her by telling her that she could leave work at 9.30 but she should sign out at 10.00 and claim an extra half hours’ worth of wages. She said to me, “She’s nice but keeps trying to get me to do bad things – I’m not going to let her have power over me and it’s wrong – I want to make money but I will do it the correct way.”
I think of this because we do live in an age where you often end up doing the “practical” thing instead of the “right” thing. It’s especially true when it comes to money, where most of us find that we our wages are stagnating or even declining but costs are increasing. The temptation to take short cuts always seems so appealing.
However, there is a maxim in life that says “there is no such thing as a free lunch,” and we often forget that there is a reaction for every action that we take. When something sounds easy, there’s probably a trade off somewhere. If someone encourages you take “easy” money, they’re probably after something else. I go back to the saying – “If it’s too good to be true – it probably is.”
Kiddo proved she has the streets smarts to recognize a scam and an inducement. I’m happy she has a sense of ethics. She’s taken a tremendous load of my shoulders for these two facts alone.
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