Hello, Mister The Biz Whiz:
I read an article in a rival publication (don't ask me what it was - all I will say about it is that it rhymes with robe and Grail) the other day that said that we should prepare our children for what they can expect when they get into the working world. So, I sat my seven year-old daughter Plutonium down and did just that. She ran into her room and slammed the door; she refuses to come out from under her bed until "the world is a better place."
What should I do?
The Biz Whiz:
Gadzooks, man! What did you tell her?Just the usual. That nothing she would do, no amount of education she could get, would prepare her for the kinds of jobs that the world would actually make available to her. That she would spend eight hours a day doing things she didn't enjoy, for wages that wouldn't entirely pay her bills, with people who saw her as their enemy in the race to get ahead. That she would be pressured to work extra hours to make up the work not being done by staff who just got fired so that the CEO could make his cost-cutting incentive bonus. That if she had an original idea, it would be stolen by her immediate boss who would take full credit for it and have her fired if she so much as looked like she was going to say anything. That she would have to take courses on her own time pretty much all the time because workplace technologies were constantly changing, and if she didn't know how the latest software worked, she could easily be replaced by somebody who did. Somebody younger. Somebody willing to work for less money. That, as dismal as all this sounds, she could never retire because the company had raided her pension fund and, in any case, she should be grateful to have this job because at least it kept her from having to live on the streets.
Things that all of us have experienced at one time or another, really.
The Biz Whiz:
Double gadzooks with whiskers and chocolate sprinkles, man!
The naked truth is a 60 year-old man with love handles the size of Texas, glasses so thick it's a miracle they don't make his head fall forward and hair sticking out of embarrassing body parts! You don't expose a child to that! All things considered, your daughter's response was measured and wholly reasonable!
As a practical matter, aside from the trauma you'll be inflicting on an innocent creature, there is the damage you'll be inflicting on the system as a whole. Can you imagine what the world would be like if a generation grew up knowing exactly what their work experience would be? Everybody would head out to the country, join a commune and get stoned all the time!
Well, you know what? We tried that once before. And, you know what it got us? Bad acid flashbacks and genital Herpes! Is that really what you want for your children?
Forget what you read in other sources (a good policy generally, by the way). What you want to do is tell your children some of Gramm's Fairy Tales (named after the economist and right wing Congressman from Texas). These include: "The Benevolent Boss Comes to the Rescue," "Goldilocks and the Three Satisfying Career Paths" and "Night of the Living Wage." Copies are available from your local Chamber of Commerce.
Of course, your children will be disappointed when they join the work force and find out that the experience isn't what you told them it was. If you're so inclined, you could argue that you were just trying to shield them from the harsh realities of the world for as long as you could. That has always smacked of self-justification to me, though. Instead, you should simply say, "What part of 'fairy tale' do you not understand?"
Your children may never speak to you again. Fortunately, that's outside of my remit - if you're truly concerned, you might want to ask Amritsar about it!
The economy is too important to be left to economists! If you have a work, financial or otherwise money-centric question, quiz the Biz Whiz at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. PRO TIP #17: This week, I'm shorting Electrical Power Outages, Inc. There's something about the name of the company that just doesn't sit right with - oh, wait. They've changed their name to Salamander and Barrett Industrials. That sounds much better - almost whimsical. Okay, it's a buy again.