Going to work with Dad!

Before I unleash my sons words on you, I thought I would introduce his first blog for him. However, the more I read his blog, I realised that this would have to be a "beforehand addendum". So let's set the scene.

You see that cute picture I put with this blog. Don't be fooled, that is only attached to the blog so as to embarrass him in front of whatever girlfriend he has this week. Because, well, as you will read - he is a git.

He's my git. But yes - he is a git.

But that's probably more my fault than anyone, and this shows how terrible a salesman I am. If I can't sell my job to my son, if I cannot make him see the value in what I do, who can I sell it to? I am supposed to be high on his list of superheroes. Right?

So when I tasked him with writing a blog about my job, he set about it.

I told him to be honest.

So he was.

What came out wasn't a blog article. It was twenty or so points of observation that he had noticed throughout the day. And as I try not to make a habit of breaking promises to my son, I said I would share his thoughts with LinkedIn.

So this is the accurate transcript of what my son thinks I do in a day!

What I think my dad does in his work day - Cameron Ward

1- Drinks lots and lots of coffee so he doesn't fall asleep - like he almost did on the bus this morning.

2- Forage for food to make sure that he doesn't starve at his desk for whatever reason.

3- Sits at his desk doing weird computer work I am sure only he understands.

4- Posts random stuff on Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter.

5- Overreacts about COVID-19, choosing to share horrifying statistics and news with the office.

6- Talks to his co-workers about the his difficult work. I am sure the big words he uses really is code so that I won't hear him talking about ladies or something.

7- Write about 50 emails a day to strangers about websites, social media and blog posts.

8- Go on a long and strange search for interesting news in Logistics and Debt Collection and Shoes and then writes them in posts for different companies on something called Hootsuite.

9- Scroll through LinkedIn reading other people's posts and liking them. I honestly think he pretends to understand some of it though.

10- Eat grapes and constantly tells me to put his phone on charge.

11- Gets other people coffee and tea to fulfil their coffee and tea needs.

12- Complain about how long the day has been (I think).

13- Have Barry the Bassist protect his pens.

14- Use Photoshop to put words over images for other companies.

15- Tell me he's in trouble again. (Interjection here: I have no idea what this about!)

16- Uses live chat rooms to talk to customers.

17- Use these awfully cool headsets whenever he gets a call from a customer.

18- Chats to potential customers on LinkedIn.

19- He kept on telling me what SEO stands for and he knows that I'll forget it. Search Eric Organisation. There that'll do.

20- I will give the old man one thing. He types really fast.

21- Tell me again to get off my phone.

22- Gets up-to-date with all the news.

23- Say something really funny (I have to say this so that he will buy me some new guitar strings this weekend).

24- Find something remotely funny on the internet and then constantly giggle about it every time someone brings it up or when he thinks about it.

25- Then we go home and do fatherly things until the next day.

And back to the old man to conclude this article

I think, for me, what is hard about reading this blog post back, is not so much the content but the author. We all want our kids to think that what we do is important - somehow. I know, for most of us, if at the end of the day, we didn't turn up to our desks on a Wednesday morning, then the world would keep on turning. Birds would still sing. People would still brew their morning coffee.

I think I might have found it a touch more amusing if it had been someone else who had shared this.

But it made me face something I never thought I would think about. There is always talk about the Daddy Issues people have when they want a father figure to be proud of them. We accept this from kids or people that we lead. But I never considered that it would be nice for our kids to be proud of what their parents do.

Is that a two way street for anyone else?

At the weekend it is great. I can make a difference with my boy. I teach him how to play guitar, for instance. But there is a whipping sting behind this dissection of my occupation here.

But most of that is on me.

What do you think?