Leave Your Kids at Home

Trust me, you’re a professional. But sometimes, your client is not.

The last thing you want from your job is when your client brings their kids to your office. It doesn’t matter if their kids behave well and sweetly. But it makes trouble if their kids are hyperactive and mess up your job, and make you can’t conquer your client well. I write this after this morning I read Fanny Fredlina’s blog about her client who brought kids and accidentally her client couldn’t manage his kids well.

I remember while I was working in an hospital, I got a patient who brought her daughter to my clinic. The ill one was the mom. And her daughter was about four. It was a small room, so there was no seat for her daughter. Then the little girl ran around the room, and messed up my concentration. (I’m not able to think well if someone wanders around at my sight, that’s why I’m never occupied to work in train station or toll road gates :-p). My nurse was aware of it and requested my patient to tell her daughter for waiting outside. But my patient was afraid, if she left her in the waiting room, someone would kidnap her daughter. (Yes, people can kidnap a kid in hospital. It’s a public place.)

But I thought she made up the reason. So after I took the patient’s physical history, I said to her, “I need to exam the WHOLE of your body and you need to take off your clothes. Would you mind if your daughter sees it?”

Finally the patient realized it, and she told her daughter, “Wait for Mommy outside. Stay right there.”

Said my nurse, “Don’t worry. Our doorman will watch her.”

After the kid was away, the patient complained to me, “Doctor, if I left her at home, nobody would take care of her.” The lady couldn’t afford a babysitter. And the kid hadn’t gone to playgroup.

After I finished her examination and gave her some treatment, I said to the patient, “Ma’am, this is clinic of lung. Lots of people have tuberculosis. If you bring your kid here, your healthy kid may get contaminated.”

The patient understood. She checked up to me a week later, and she didn’t bring her daughter anymore. I didn’t ask her where the kid was.

You might think that I hate kids. It was wrong. Any job you do, if your client brings children who potentially annoy your job, then it’s gotta be a disturbance. Even my dad, a pediatrician whose daily job struggling with kids, forbids his patient bring their unnecessary kids to his office.

My dad’s ever got a couple brought three of their children to my dad’s office. It was only one kid who was sick, but the rest of two were brought in to my dad’s room. Children are almost always hyperactive. So my dad asked his nurse to tell the parents, not to let the two fit kids in. It could annoy my dad’s concentration.

Once in the first year of my high school, I had chemistry lesson. My chemistry teacher entered my classroom, brought her kid who was still about six. The little girl seemed just come home from school, and she still wore her sport uniform. During my teacher was explaining the subject, her girl sat on the corner and knocked the desk, and I couldn’t listen to what my teacher said. Damn it!

I thought, probably anyone who had office should call Donald Duck or Teletubbies to their offices, for entertaining the kids who were brought by their client. Anybody knows the number?

I haven’t become a parent, so I haven’t felt how hard it is to babysit. But if you wanna consult to a professional, never take your kids with you. If there’s no way for you to keep them with anyone, please bring them with you, but make your kids polite and behave well. The consultant can’t serve your kids well if your kids make noise, and you can’t get your service as excellent as it should be.