Professional Kindergarten

I always told my family and friends growing up that I could never teach gradeschool, and that, in fact, I could never teach anything less than college or graduate classes because I would end up killing either my students or myself. That would inevitably draw some disapproving looks, but at least I was confident in the fact that I knew myself and could be honest about my shortcomings as a self-professed perfectionist loner. With all of my horrible people skills in mind, I decided to enter into Business school in college and study something that would immerse me in Excel spreadsheets, Outlook, and a played down version of 'TPS reports' that wouldn't make me want to chew on glass. I secretly prided myself on the fact that I was going to do great things within my hugely ambiguous, amateur notion of what "business" was, and felt an almost maternal pity for those who were sentencing themselves to a life of servitude as educators, hospitality agents, doctors, etc - they were always going to be so... needed.

I graduated college with not one, but TWO degrees, and promptly went to work for a computer company whose most successful spokesperson has recently gone down in history as the guy whose stoner antics propelled an entire market to spend billions by just saying, "duuude!" I was big time. I worked hard, got promoted, and was all of a sudden a people manager a month after my 24th birthday. I used to scoff and roll my eyes at those infomercials that obnoxiously boast "so easy even a child could operate it!", wondering how those people became so obtuse as to associate their product with the intellect of a five-year-old. Now, after over 18 months of people management experience in one of the most high-stress environments imaginable, I realize that the joke's on me. I may not be in a classroom, but I have a whole team of five-year-olds. The only problem is that they range from ages 20 to 43, and until now I never thought to have smelly-good markers or felt boards with fun cut-out shapes to keep them interested and productive at work.

So now I am totally convinced there is some sort of hidden brilliant management tip I can find in those infomercials. How is it possible that one can make something so simple to understand that a child could completely understand and operate?! At least if they didn't understand after the 19th explanation I could tell myself, "they're kindergarteners, and they're five." The problem I find myself currently in is that my Kindergarteners are 30, some with real kindergarteners of their own - and I just really don't think they're intellect levels should rival one another. Alas, the similarities I'm seeing in this work and my sister's several years of teaching kindergarten are astonishing. Here are some fun examples:

• They ask every 15 minutes if its time to go home yet
• They'll delete emails before even reading them and then get mad at me when they don't know what I'm talking about in meetings
• Every time they don't want to do something they miraculously have to pee
• They only have to ask me something when I'm on the phone
• They have coloring books to keep them entertained while on the phones and have actually fought about who stole the blue crayon

Occasionally, I look around and wonder how I could have been so arrogant as to think that my corporate America life would be so much different than this. At least I know I could always make a career move into teaching if this whole corporate America people-management thing doesn't work out for me. I mean hell, I'll already have all the smelly-good markers and coloring books.