Just when I figured out how to stop taking work home with me, a more-demanding boss entered the picture at home. “Better go cut the grass,” my 2-year-old son admonishes. The topic has been programmed into his head by my
Just when I figured out how to stop taking work home with me, a more-demanding boss entered the picture at home.
“Better go cut the grass,” my 2-year-old son admonishes.
The topic has been programmed into his head by my wife, who is convinced a posse of torch-bearing neighbors comes out nightly to measure the blades in our lawn against their own. The bossiness is all Sean’s.
Though he gets freaked out when the noisy lawn equipment gets too close, he’s adamant that I do the job right.
“Daddy, use the lawn mower!”
No sooner does the hum of that machine fade when the pint-sized boss orders me to move on to the next task. Breaks are hard to come by.
“Daddy, use the leaf blower!”
I explain that the edger has to be used first so there’s something to blow or vacuum. Luckily, for a supervisor, he’s adaptable, one trait a couple of my former bosses were missing.
“Daddy, use the edger!”
When the last of the yard is conquered for another week, he likes to pretend he’s a delegator. You know, the kind of boss who trusts that the workers will finish their tasks and just double-checks on them later.
“Daddy, are you all done?”
Sorry, bud, you’re a classic micromanager. Might as well accept it. Perfect it.
What’s encouraging is he’s a hands-on boss, not afraid to get his hands dirty. Well, he does expect his hands to be wiped when too much dirt gets on them, but I mean it figuratively.
Once the real yard work is done, he hauls out his toy lawn mower and shaves that imaginary grass down to nothing. Until he can share his dad’s fanaticism for sports, he’s content to employ a baseball tee as an edger and a plastic putter as a leaf blower.
The unbearable summer has forced me to shove the yard maintenance closer and closer to sundown, so we typically have to head inside to get ready for the boy’s bath or bedtime immediately afterward. It’s an unpopular decision, but that’s when the authoritative voice in us comes out. If that fails, we manipulative parents have figured out ways to make it seem like his decision.
Either way, at the end of the day, we can put the supervisor-in-training to bed and relax in our rightful spot, the boss’s chair. Right after we remove the booster seat from it.
• Racine, Wis. Journal Times reporter Mike Moore writes Daddy Talk. Mommy Talk is written by reporters Marci Laehr Tenuta and Janine Anderson. Their columns run in a three-week rotation and can be found online at http://www.journaltimes.com/mom.
