Average Jane’s Earliest Office Memories

Today was Take Your Child to Work Day, so the office was filled with mini doppelgängers of many of my co-workers. 

Once I was old enough to be in school, both of my parents worked and there was no official day for bringing kids to work. However, I still went to visit my parents at work from time to time. My most persistent memory of my mother's office: eating sugar cubes from the coffee station. 

In the mid-1970s, my mother and grandmother had a business together offering advertising and public relations services. They had several employees and an office big enough to do some exploring. 

The office was located on the main square of the town that was (and is) the county seat, so there was a lot of cool, old architecture and the courthouse was right across the street.

Even better, back then there was still a drugstore with a soda fountain on the corner, so good behavior at the office might lead to a nice chocolate malt in the middle of the day.

I don't remember how I killed time at the office, but I'm sure it must have involved drawing and art supplies to tide me over when I tired of the book I'd brought.

My dad taught defensive tactics at the police academy, so visits to his workplace were short and sporadic in comparison. My current work experience has much more in common with those early visits to my mother's office, even though we now have computers instead of typewriters.

What do you remember about your experience of your parents' jobs when you were a kid?