What do you do for a job?

What does your Dad do for a living?

Umm, he goes into the city and works from home some days, and he has meetings, lots of meetings.

I witnessed this interaction between my daughter and one of her friends' parents.

Now, part of me gets it; I’ve worked for a few different places in my daughter’s life, and she is only about to turn ten. Plus, I know kids don’t really pay much attention to what their parents do when they aren’t at home, or they convince themselves their parents have a job that is much cooler than it really is.

I’ll give you an example. But before I do, let me just say I was about 8 years old, and as we know, 8-year-old boys are really dumb. So, here we go: my dad was a surveyor, which meant he was going away for work quite regularly. My dad was also tall and thin, and had brown, tight, curly hair.  Even though I knew it was highly unlikely, I convinced myself that my dad, a surveyor in Australia, was actually Michael Landon, and he was going back to Hollywood every week to film Little House on the Prairie.

Well, now that you’ve had a good laugh, let’s go back to the fact that my daughter doesn’t know what I do for a living. To be fair, it’s not an easy job to describe, particularly to a 10-year-old. I am a regulatory compliance specialist who works with government departments to improve their regulatory focus. She knows I used to be a police officer. She’s seen photos of me in uniform and all my police memorabilia, and a lot of my friends are police or ex-police.

When I spoke to her friend’s parent later, I mentioned that I was a bit embarrassed she didn’t know what I do for a living, and I explained my job. To their credit, this parent gave me a perspective I hadn’t considered; kids rarely see their parents produce something tangible as part of their work, so it’s hard for them to connect that to what they do.

I hate to admit it, but they are right. I don’t do anything that you can physically touch, aside from some very boring policies and procedures. My dad (when he wasn’t leading the Ingalls family through various adventures) would put pegs in the ground, run string lines, and produce plans of people’s properties.

Growing up, I knew what all my friends' parents did for a living. They produced tangible things in a world that needed things. There was a full spectrum of people who built houses, sold houses, worked on cars, were electricians or doctors, were in the army, and even one guy's dad was a helicopter pilot.  

I look at my daughter and her friends; their parents work as claim assessors with insurance companies or are public servants; their days are generally made up of emails and meetings. Sometimes those meetings occur while their kids are in the other room and can hear Mom or Dad discussing the intricacies of the work, but what is it making? What is being produced? What can they look at and say, “I made that”.

The funniest thing is that my daughter has seen me produce more tangible things away from work. She’s seen a hat rack I made, or the front end of the Ford pickup truck I’m restoring, which I've reassembled.  She’s seen me bake some delicious desserts, and the occasional roast pork.

Maybe I need to let her know that people still make things. Let her get that connection between the tangible and the imaginary world.

Or, maybe I just need to produce more than hot air in my meetings.

Thanks for reading.

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